Autore: Peter Herrmann's Blog

Dr. Peter Herrmann is a sociologist of German origin -- well, he was, before moving forward, being now ..., well, some say: social philosopher, permanently crossing borders between arts, economics, jurisprudence, philosophy, political science and .., yes, still sociology ... and having lost many links to the origins as fasr as nationality is concerned, trying to imagine that there is no border ...

Is there a life after? – or: To Cycle or to Scooter, that is the real question

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications

For Marijke

and with special thanks to the library staff at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

It had been some time back – I still stayed in Budapest. To be precise it had been the last day of this years academic stay. There are two ways of appreciating something like that, the one: panicking, thinking about all things that had been not done and still have to be done at some stage. In Ireland it is the pre-Christmas disease, in Italy the pre-holiday disease, both posing the same basic question which reads

Is there a life after?

The other way is more realist, assuming that there definitely is a life after which leaves sufficiently time to look after those things, and suggesting that if there is actually really no life after it doesn’t matter anyway to start working on all the pending things. Carpe diem even if the auto-correct suggested right now carpet diet, which may be giving a hint: stay on the carpet, walk on sound ground where actual life takes place every day.

After having been in Budapest for a substantial time without going to the real place, I chose that as appropriate for the last day, limiting the work dimension for the time being on deciding to which bath I will go. Result: the Széchenyi Gyógyfürdő és Uszoda. It is a reasonably long, but this day pleasant walk: along the Andrássy út, somewhat enjoying the “historical alienation”, imagining the historical contradiction: the aspiring bourgeoisie at the turn of the century, probably crowned by the opening of Budapest’s first line of what would be later the cities metro network; accommodating governments later, those of other countries: embassies and ambassadors, and now hosting remainders of the blaze of glory: the reappearance in the new clothes of the new richesse.

  • The one thing coming to mind are the obvious hegemonies and their change over time – sure, one may add two things. The one is that hegemony is exactly not about the obvious “ruling” and it’s incarnations in somewhat obvious structures. Of course, the standard for understanding hegemony is set by the definition given by Antonio Gramsci, later elaborated by Nicos Poulantzas.
    The other question that may be posed is, if one wants to call it this, a matter of political history – and as such it is a matter of assessing change: What is about the years between 1947 and 1989? Had that been socialism and is socialism – at least for some interim time – the re-construction of overcome patterns with(in) a different context. The phrase of the withering away of the state is rather complex as already the new state would actually not be the same as the old institutional system had been although it appears to maintain the same or at least a very similar institutional framework. We may have to speak of an emerging system that establishes itself only with the intention of giving birth to something else by (not before or after, sic!) self-destruction.
  • The other point is about the hegemonies in daily life – and though it is also a complex issue, one facet is that we are not least asked to look at free spaces.

*****

All the same, talking about governing, governance, hegemony …, we are always confronted with the actual question of self-determination. Leaving brute violence aside, “following something/somebody”, “part-subordinating” is not least about some form of freedom of decision. Now, such freedom can – and in someway is – a matter of …, the matter with which the decision is concerned: the well-known exit-voice-loyalty option suggested by Albert Otto Hirschman. It deserves some special attention that Hirschman’s contribution had been made in particular in the context of firms – such situations can be usually seen as under-complex in their very nature, as they consider the problem Hamlet put forward with his famous question as answered or irrelevant: in any case the being, the existence is taken for granted – and it is simple existence that is seen as relevant.

The question Shakespeare did not look at may actually be only recently – and temporarily – be of particular and peculiar relevance. The question is

to cycle or to scooter.

In this formulation it is of course posed against a special personal background: having lived for short time in Rome – where using the scooter seems to be part of the genetic code – and having spent again some time in Amsterdam – I’m sure that one day a tiny DNS-string will be found determining that people in that place use the bike.

Ops, but that is exactly the point …, and I will come back to it.

Sure, cycling or using the scooter are not the only options, another option is that of swimming, to be more precise: going to a bath. Why do we commonly forget how people live, how they shape, “design” their socio-personal life.

One reason is surely that we are – in daily small talk and scientific political analysis – more interested in differences instead of similarities. And paradoxically this means to look at the uniqueness of political-institutional systems. To the extent to which this is not about the concrete-individual case but the general-abstract, this can be captured by looking at the frameworks, leaving the actual life and living outside of considerations – go to any gallery and you will find so many paintings that are apparently hidden beneath a heavy frame.

And such a heavy frame seems to be at first glance dominant: a most beautiful bath, clear in its overall outline, complex in its internal structure with the various small pools with the different temperatures, shapes etc.; this frame is actually underlined by “something” that appears to be content: guests, bathers. There is obviously a difference between “framing guests” and those that truly belong to the content – and it is exactly this twofold meaning of content: being a matter of substance but at the very same time a matter of being content. You may say: appropriately filling the frame. And anything that really fills a frame must fit into it, must be appropriate by appropriating the available space, i.e. making it its property.

In this light, the bath culture in Hungary is something specific, mediating between different worlds: the world of nature which provided a vast wealth of hot springs; the world of a country that had been shaped by being historically a border country between Orient and Occident; the specific “encapsulation”, typical for a nation without or with limited state due to colonialisation and subordination under foreign – in this case Hapsburgian – rule … . – One could surely go on, looking at the details of a social space in the midst of the old Ottoman Empire which had been dominated by men and masculinity, though it left most decisive niches for women where they could actually hide in some way – also in the bath: talking and negotiating about their own business which included arranging marriages, thus being in a way the core ante-chamber of society building.

And indeed these baths are the places where wars are made and lost and won. Only on few occasions of my visits in one of the baths I did not see people playing chess, very often the board game, but frequently just in a metaphorical way: building governments, based on strategic alliances, elaborating policies and making declarations: never completely moving beyond the walls, but entering the public via a detour as part of the war of manoeuvre. – People who are swimming …, yes, but few and many of them are the tourists, the “framing guests”.

*****

Being that day in the Széchenyi Gyógyfürdő és Uszoda, looking at things to come during the next few days: the short visit in Vienna, interrupting my journey for a business meeting in the Kunsthistorische Museum, then moving home to Rome, the eternal city as they say: permanency of the timelessness. And it is a short thought only: Did Lenin also think about access of all these privileged places for the proverbial cook when he said that every cook should be able to rule the state? Behind all this is finally a question that is easily lost out of sight, that is not even consciously articulated. Aren’t we dealing with the intermeshing and oscillation of different realities? Borders between utility goods and luxury goods are blurring, means of ordinary communication are changing their position in the overall systemic structure, emerging as symbols of governing, oppression, compromise and accommodation; and from there they are returning into daily life: alienated forms of a supposed overcome reality: the

circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living

as Marx put it into words in his 18th Brumaire.

Perhaps we may usefully speak of an alienated trickle-down effect: things taken out of their context and simultaneously with this de-contextualisation gaining a new, pacified meaning – and with this, again simultaneously, pacifying meaning.

… It is about the Knot of Governing[1] – it is also a matter of artefacts, multiplied and in some form imitated and mass-produced …

Si nous nous concentrons sur la stratégie commerciale, nous comprenons pourquoi les historiens ont normalement associé la question de la production de masse ou sérielle au problème du marché : la plupart de ces production, par leur coût relativement modéré, leur standardisation et leur modularité, s’adresse à des acheteurs anonymes plutôt qu’à des commanditaires. Il est vrai que les études des dernières années invitent à raison à ne pas opposer trop fortement le commanditaire à l’acheteur.[2]

And as such they are gaining access into peoples’ living rooms

Het was een voor Europese begrippen bijzonder fenomeen dat schilderijen in de loop van de zeventiende eeuw een onmisbaar element waren geworden in het interieur van de gegoede burgerij. Men had het voor het kiezen, want het aanbond was zeer divers, zowel als het gaat om kwaliteit als om typen schilderijen. Niet al die kopers waren kenners of fijnproevers met verstand van kunst; schilderijen weden door veel mensen beschouwd als een aardigheidje aan de wand waar weinig woorden aan behoefden te worden vuilgemaakt. Het was vooral de omvang van de vrije markt voor anonieme kopers die toen in Europa uitzonderlijk was.[3]

*****

Looking at the role of women is well worth a side remark.

One prominent and fruitful tendency, which has very much affected the selection of textual sources in this book, has been the growth of interest in types of object traditionally considered as ‘decorative art/. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (quattrocento and cinquecento) in Italy saw changes not only in the styles, format sand subjects of what we think of as ‘fine art’, but in the reorganisation of urban environments and of the ecclesiastical and secular buildings. Many such buildings were on a very large scale, ad by the later sixteenth century they came to be filled with a huge number of furnishings and other artefacts, …[4]

And in this context the role of women gained a new place. As pointed out elsewhere:

In historical perspective this meant indeed mass production. Everly S.Welch in her book Art in Renaissance Italy 1350-1500 (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1997: 75) points out that this had also been an entrance for women into the sphere of this craft: though mainly undertaken by monks, the copying and skilful ‘illustration’ had been also undertaken by women.

Well, actually it is worthwhile to spend more as a side remark on this topic though it is again something that cannot be carried out on this occasion.

*****

Some weeks later, I am going to work – admittedly it is not in any kind usual work: not for most of the people and also not for me. I walk through the revolving entrance door at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. And I walk through the checkpoint

– Hoi, goedemorgen. Hoe gaat het vandaag?.

– Je bent heel vroeg vandaag.

Indeed, I am early. Actually too early for the library where I work these days. So I take a detour, walking up the main staircase, being on my own, turning around the corner, walking thorugh the large hall.

Monumental, indeed: van Rijns Night-Watch. It is just me, standing in front of the painting, I’m the only person in the room,[5] looking in the eye of history, facing this monumental incarnation of the at the time when van Rihjn painted this work, aspiring burgers of the aspiring new trade-nation. Leaving the earlier, Italian, roots of the new capitalist mode aside you may say: I am standing alone in front of this impressive showcase of the early stage of the emerging imperialism: old capitalism, expanding trade, moving towards the new capitalism which later became “pure imperialism” as highest stage of capitalism. And all this in a specific way stablished on the foundation of a capitalist and caitalising agriculture if we can trust J.L. Price.

*****

I remember a much earlier, similar experience: I had been privileged enough to see without anybody else in the room Picasso’s Guernica. An equally impressive peace of art.[6] And it did what probably a good piece of art always should do – and what proves a piece of art being a good one: in some way it draws the viewer into its ban, fascinates him or her simply by its power of expression – be it beauty, aversion, the specific distance it creates from every day’s life by dissociation. But at the same time there is the other side, namely the mobilisation emerging from the energy it entails, thoughts, wishes, dislikes and critiques the painter did not just express but for which s/he used the artefact as mediator.

And as such it is also – being a good work – mediating between times, not obliterating contradictions and dynamics, but making it by subtle, at times barely consciously detectable hints possible for the viewer to retrace the tensions within the Zeitgeist.

On the canvas worked on by van Rijn the glamour of the ancient regime, as lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch still standing next to the centre, but, though dressed in a golden drapery, already pushed to the side, apparently degraded, a gofer behind the emerging power of the global trade, in personam Fans Bannng Cocq, who took over the lead: on the canvas we see the signs of time: determination, pride, failure, grief – the dynamic of a war-scenery metaphorically showing the real battles going on: with other means, though still about a power game of expansion – if nothing else, the East and West India Trade Companies witnessing the pattern.

And this makes it so important that we are looking at a genuinely dynamic painting. As such it is completely different to the commonly known portraits of the time, depicting people lined up in a seemingly static hierarchy.[7]

Picasso’s manifestation against the war, the accusation of the invader of the small town in the Basque country. But also the expression of those who actually suffered: the victims who are now at the centre. And here we find also the many hints: the lost past, destroyed by the supposed superiority but equally by the lack of their power.

Lost pride – as the ground that had been lost …, Werner Hoffmann says

society, possessed by collective madness, celebrates its suicide.[8]

And he traces it back to Goya:

Physical suffering is one of the great themes of modern painting of modern painting, and I call ‘modern’ the period which starts with Goya. His ‘Tres de Mayo’ is a painted manifesto. Until the 18th century history painting was content to tell the story of dramatic events ….The defeated seem to deserve their fate as in a sporting contest when the stronger will win without the moral complications or frustrations. The suffering of the victim is not a theme in itself.[9]

Still, one can easily agree with Rachel Wischnitzer’s assessment. Though as much I personally read it as antifascist statement, an assertion against fascist violence, there is another dimension to it: the generalised notion of rejecting that ‘suicidal notion’ of modernity and the positive movements. In Wischnitzer’s words:

Picasso does not refer to the Fascists, the Nazis, or to Franco at all. Guernica is concerned only with the situation in the Loyalist camp. France and England keep neutrality, Russia lends support, the survivors express hope and confidence.

That is how Picasso wants to see and present the situation.[10]

If this is correctly reflecting Picasso’s overall line of thought may be left open – it would be speculation. However that it is part of the artists reflection, or a reflection the viewer may feel encouraged to undertake, may duly claim evidence. To point on one issue, we may refer to Gijs van Hensbergen who writes

In Guernica, the raised arm of a woman holding a candle tight in her grip pushes from the right-hand side of the canvas and helps to illuminate the scene. Symbolic of liberty and truth, she enlightens the world while forcing us to survey tragic drama played out in front of our eyes.[11]

May be that this had been the reason that, standing in front of the accusingly monumental painting I felt something keeping my upright, maintaining my strength – a guiding arm, holding a light. Wischnitzer – with reference to Reinhold Hohl, points out that the arm is a kind of ‘reincarnation’ of the arm of Agnolo Bronziono’s Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time – and looking at that painting from the middle of the 16th century this may well be true.

Most convincing, however, is Hohl’s discovery of the model for the huge arm carrying the lamp in Guernica, in Bronzino’s allegory: Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, c. 1546 … In Bronzino’s painting Time lifts the curtain with the majestic movement of his powerful, muscular arm. Truth, the figure on the upper left, helps holding up some folds of the drape. The central figures are Venus with Cupid on the left and Deceit (rather than Folly) on the right. Two masks are on the ground on the right.[12]

But times changed – and accepting a coarse simplification it means the allegory ‘Time’ changed and is in Picasso’s piece female. It is time for something that may be called ‘reinvented matriarchy’.

*****

And as much as it is a privilege to be allowed to stand alone in front of any of these paintings, it is an additional privilege having experienced both of them. For me personally there had been years between the two occasions, perhaps decades, and surely a long time of experiences, ventures, own successes and failures, hopes and disappointments. However, it had not been such a long period as it had been for the raise and fall of nations, empires and systems as the two paintings express: in this way two facets of an experience that makes history immediately palpable, appreciable.

And it may be suggested that there had been the from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel known cunning of reason secretly at play, forecasting the dark side:

At least since the cleaning of the picture in 1946-7, it has been evident that the scene takes place in daylight, with the sun streaming down from the top left. A further cleaning completed in 1980 showed that the tones are predominantly cool. The traditional title The Nightwatch which dates from the late 18th century, is therefore incorrect but it would be absurdly pedantic to suggest changing it now.[13]

– Reviving in my memory the two viewing experiences and combining them, empathising the large lines of historical development: glory and decay, I remember the recent phone conversation, talking to Paul who told me about his new publication – the first volume now in print: It is about the crisis, the systemic crisis, that is not only structural, but goes far beyond, concerning also the civilisation and of politico-environmental perspectives.

– It had been easy to agree on our common interest and work, and though it surely sounds a bit bizarre it is about scooters, bikes and baths.

*****

Later I leave the library, the usual ‘Hoi’ and I go this time through the exhibition halls.

The paintings I see now are very much my own paintings, part of my daily life. And I feel – at least here and now – a little bit like the cook who actually does not need a museum or a bath if governing really means to possess all these artefacts as life’s real facts. …

After having entered earlier that day the library through the backdoor, the servants entrance, and now leaving through the exhibition halls, it is strange to see the people around: standing in front of the paintings staring at the exhibits as they had been earlier standing on the balcony of the reading room, looking at the old books and …, looking at me, so many times I had been the only person sitting there and doing what the name of the room suggests: reading. Sure, at this stage – in my life and the life of our societies it is a privilege being able and taking the liberty to follow the vision, Marx suggested in the German ideology:[14]

… finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.

Indeed, as long as such ownership is not given we see waste produced – it is the case when we see the cook who wants and actually needs all this, even if it may well take the form of knickknack, the form of art in its own right. And it surely is a provocation, saying that the educated classes, ownership being reduced on intellectual simulation and understanding, is not really doing much better.[15]

*****

It is time now to keep the promise. Above I stated

I’m sure that one day a tiny DNS-string will be found determining that people in that place use the bike.

Ops, but that is exactly the point ….

– and I promised to come back to it. This supposed DNS-string is, of course, not really such encoding. It is not a given but it is the knot of governing which may be tightened by pulling at the wrong end, or which can be loosened by developing a considered strategy, applying both, a radical slicing of the knot as we know it from Alexander’s victory, and at the vey same time a circumspect and dialectical adjournment, dealing with all the different tiny fibres that are making up the strings. – Surely something that I have to consider more seriously in the book on which I had been working these days.

– It will take a long time to make Amsterdam a city of scooters although their current number suggests different. And if it shoud happen one day we will have to sit down to make the calculation of pros and cons.

For the time being it will remain an open question – as much as it is an open question if my visit and work in the Rijksmuseum’s library will result in my presence n many photoalbums worldwide, put side by side with photos from paintings, books and other exhibits, perhaps with a little note

Peter, reader, early 21st century – please, do not feed

or if it will contribute in one or another way to a real reading culture, seeing books not as something to be consumed by individuals but being part of a real culture of communication and honest dispute. It si similar to the other question on byke, scooter and bath, just a matter of appropriate, i.e. ‘appropriated’ culture.

[1]            Frigga Haug introduced recently some ideas under the catchword ‘Herrschaftsknoten’, furthering her thoughts on the Four-in-One-Perspective – http://www.rosalux.de/documentation/48090/am%E2%80%90herrschaftsknoten%E2%80%90ansetzen.html – and http://williamthompsonucc.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/four-in-one/

[2]            Tomasi, Michele, 2011 : L’art multiplié : matériaux t problèmes pour une réflexion ; in : L’art multiplié. Production de masse, en série, pour le marché dans les arts entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance. Sous la direction de Michele Tomasi ave la collaboration de Sabine Utz ; Roma :Viella:7-24 ; here : 14

[3]            Boers, Marion, 2012: De Noord-Nederlandse kunsthandel in de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw; Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren: 9

[4]            Women and the visual arts in Italy c. 1400-1650. Luxury and leisure, duty and devotion. A sourcebook/Selected, translated and introduced by Paola Tingali and Mary Rogers Manchester/New York Manchester University Press 2012: 1

[5]            Of course, security is there too – After a brief moment of a kind of ‘inner devotion’ on my side we begin to chat. I am another time in some way surprised by seeing that such jobs are at least for many not so much about security but about living in the middle of art work and history – though they are not allowed to ‘govern the state as Lenin’s cook’, they are allowed to look in some ways on what had been going on I history on the back stage …

[6]            It had been commissioned by the Spanish Republican Government for the World’s Fair in Paris in Paris, 1937 – on that occasion it had been by and large unrecognised and ignored.

[7]            Cf. Schama, Simon: Rembrandt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJYlzyNQjpc – 14/08/2013: 8:10 ff.

[8]            Hofmann, Werner, 1983: Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ in its Historical Context; in: artibus e historiae. Rivista internazionale di arti visive e cinema; IRSA-LiCOSA. Nr 7(IV); Venezia-Wien: 141-169; here 149

[9]            ibid.: 141 f.

[10]            Wischnitzer, Rachel, 1985: Picasso’s Guernica. A Matter of Metaphor: in: artibus e historiae. Rivista internazionale di arti visive e cinema; IRSA-LiCOSA. Nr 12 (VI); Venezia-Wien:153-172; here: 165

[11]            van Hensbergen, Gijs, 2005: Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon; London: Bloomsbury: 105

[12]            Wischnitzer, op.cit.: 163 f.; with reference to Reinhold Hohl, 1978: Die Wahrheit ueber Guernica; Pantheon, 36, Jan. 1978: 41-58

[13]            Galleria Dep Art Milano Italia A.Biasi Dadamaino Simeti Wilding: The Night Watch (1642)ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ART EDUCATION © visual-arts-cork.com http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-paintings/night-watch.htm – 14/08/2013

[14]            Supposedly this text had been added by Engels, with a mocking undertone.

[15]            Just briefly contextualising this by pointing on marketisation, commodification and the loss of meaning of education in its humanist understanding.

Human Rights – “Lives Rights” – Children’s Rights

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in social quality, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications

[1]

Abstract

The article attempts to add a new direction to the debate on human rights by looking at it from four perspectives: practice, development, everyday’s life and political responsibility of social work. This aims not least on working towards the foundation of a fourth generation of human rights, supplementing the generally accepted three generations. At stake is the genuine acknowledgement of social human rights in everyday’s life.

Human rights are often looked at if they are – be it in reality or by way of perception – breached. To speak of perceived or real breaches is certainly often superfluous, because it is obvious that certain actions and situations are even a matter of disrespecting the most fundamental and inalienable human right: the one to live, i.e. to mere existence of the human being. However, in many cases the situation lacks such clarity: definitions and practices are controversial, and furthermore it is often controversial whether certain issues, though they may be obviously being inhumane, are actually human-rights-related questions. The reason for such statement, possibly surprising for some of the readers, is simple:  human rights have their origin in protecting citizens against arbitrary abuses of the states’ power against the (world) citizens. In other words human rights had been linked to the state, as Weber says the only entity upholding the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.

In such a reading private actions – and these are also acts of companies in global markets or actions of fanatical fundamentalist religious communities[2] – are strictly irrelevant to human rights. There is another dimension to the fact that these rights are nearly only issued in case of violation: both, the rather abstract reading of human rights and the consideration of individual violations reveals again and again that addressing these rights is bay and large detached from everyday’s life. At least apparently they do not affect the ordinary insanity: conflicts repeatedly preventing in different ways in everyday’s life that people can develop with all its facets of personality.

Admittedly this is a rather complicated and complex situation. But it is also a fundamental question, concerning the fundamental difficulty of defining human rights. Narrow definitions look at very obvious “cases” – even if one has to admit that the two declarations of human rights claiming universality (resolution 217 A [III] of the General Assembly on 10 December 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights; http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml – 7/8/13; Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, Aug. 5, 1990, UN GAOR, World Conf on Hum Rts, 4th… sess, Agenda Item 5, UN Doc A/CONF.157/PC/62/Add.18 [1993]; http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/cairodeclaration.html – 7/8/13) are in fact not really universal. This is also true and clearly the case for the UN Declaration, which contains a strong affirmation of the capitalist mode of produciton (see below and Presentation Narrowing the Gap Between the World’s Richest and Poorest Contribution for the German wave GLOBAL MEDIA FORUM 2011). However, a broad definition runs not only the risk of including too many aspects, but at the same time it also opens the door for arbitrariness. Anyway, it is important to focus on the importance of human rights in every day’s life, going beyond the protection of mere existence. The development up to now is commonly seen as characterized by three generations:

The first generation concerns “negative rights,” in the sense that their respect requires that the state do nothing to interfere with individual liberties, and correspond roughly to the civil and political rights.

The second generation … requires positive action by the state to be implemented, as is the case with most social, economic and cultural rights. The international community is now embarking upon a third generation … which may be called “rights of solidarity”

(Vasak, Karel, 1977: A 30-Year Struggle. The Sustained Efforts to Give Force of Law to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; in: The UNESCO Courier. A Window open on the World; Paris: UNESCO: 30/11: 29/32; here: 29; cf. Herrmann, Peter (forthcoming): Justice and Law Today: On the Translation of General Ideas on Justice into Claims for Security and Responsibility; in: Herrmann: God, Rights, Law and a Good Society [Writings on Philosophy and Economy of Power, 2]; Bremen/Oxford: EHV Academic press, 2012)

It is fundamental that a fourth stage is missing – and such stage is actually difficult to imagine within contemporary paradigms of social sciences in general: the social law and the socio-economic self-FORMATION law in a very genuine sense. It is justified to see the debate on human rights as being firmly based in the tradition of positive law – be it in a positive or in a negative way. However, it has to be seen that

[p]ositive law assumes an ordered social context that exhibits certain deficiencies: it envisages more desirable – an ideal – ordering of the context; it prescribes the steps to be taken in order to move the actual towards the ideal; and it orders that these measures be instituted. That is, positive law is at once expository, normative prescriptive, advisory, and imperative. But it is positive law as a means to an end …

(Jenkins, Iredell, 1980: Social Order and the Limits of Law. A Theoretical Essay; Princeton: Princeton University Press: 75)

This can only be understood in the context of society and socialization. Significant is the statement of Norbert Elias, who points out that people can only be understood as a process in its ongoing development, and he also suggests that this orientation is constantly undermined by the overwhelming tendency to push all processes into some form of structures (see Elias, Norbert, 1980/81: Social Process Models on multiple levels, in: Elias, Norbert: Essays On Sociology and the Humanities III; Dublin. University College Dublin Press, 2009: 40-42).

******

Of course, structural thinking knows as well thoughts about development, but these are fundamentally shaped by a very particular and peculiar understanding: it assumes an indispensable link between two areas:

  • First it is stated that there is a (more or less) straightforward development to “modern” societies – this is idealised as enlightenment, in reality it is about the development of capitalist modes of production;
  • Secondly, development is then also increasingly about development of human rights. On the one hand this is seen as development of human rights themselves – i.e. they are taken as dynamically expanding, steadily albeit very slowly; on the other hand “successful development” is indentified with modern societies and it is suggested that they are guaranteeing human rights – certainly is not denied: “unfortunately” we would find “slips” within and even caused by the capitalist system, but this is just considered as an exception and mostly seen as “bad practice”, which can actually only be found in the countries of the global South.[3]

Important is not so much the accuracy of the proposed relationships – which is of course highly questionable. A key point is more a question of the methodology (see Herrmann / O’Leary, in preparation: Human Rights – Search for a Fourth Generation): Apart from the fact that the underlying understanding is highly individualistic – thus following very much the tradition of European Enlightenment – another problem has to be seen in the fact that certain human rights are faded out by a structural-methodological pattern. First, these are everyday issues – as mentioned earlier, human rights issues are only then on the agenda where we find breaches in extreme situations. Secondly, however, the concept of development itself implies a certain ignorance: underdevelopment means lack of development of human rights or lack of human rights awareness and therefore “underdeveloped people” need to be “developed” in order to be able to accept and live these rights.

Of course, this is an exaggerated and simplified version of a complex problem. But such simplification is useful to clarify extremely important questions:

  • Human rights are in this way conceptually reduced and seen as passive rights – and only “fully developed human beings” can really take full advantage of these rights (of course it is left open who these “fully developed human beings” are;
  • they are only taken individualistically – as only the capitalist formation represents such “full development” and provides completely developed awareness in terms of the underlying idea of man.

Just a quick note on the last point must do suffice: The UN Declaration points in Article 25.1 out:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

In other words, realistically, the only way of full involvement is to participate in the global capitalist system.

******

Formulated provocatively, social work is facing an impossible task – the squaring of the cycle. On the one hand it is of course important to recognise the basic human rights in the given understanding, aiming on securing their realisation. But at the same time we are facing the necessity of engaging in the balancing act of criticizing these rights at the level of the underlying methodology and the subsequent definitions. Two aspects have to play a particularly important role – in the following they are only addressed as questions for future research and action:

The first is development of practice: human rights must be understood more as matter of social human practice. This means in a global perspective the need to acknowledge other modes of production; in national perspectives it means to allow other ways of life – not only as matter of multiculturalism, but more in the sense of different understandings of the production and reproduction of everyday’s life. Obviously, this includes especially the recognition of such modes of work and lifestyles as they are claimed by some ethnic minorities. And importantly we are here also facing the particular issues and conflicts: are such rights compatible with requirements of gender equality – as for instance some issues of gender equality in the modes of production of Gypsies, Islamic communities, etc. – Mentioning the possible tensions is here only meant to raise issues, not more and not less.

The second issue is development. It is a challenge as we have to ask and answer how we are dealing in this light with “non-development” and “not-developed people”. In this formulation, this seems to be sufficiently provocative to clarify the issue at stake: the conceptual difficulties that do exist in dealing with interpretations presented by certain groups. These are considerations that are partly already arising in official discussions in connection with the so-called rights of the third generation. In the present case, however, the solidarity rights must be understood correctly: we are talking about the right to develop and practice the social, and not only realise oneself within a defined social context. That means both “rights for the weaker members of society”, but it also means to overcome fundamentally the concept of weakness, gong much beyond ideas of support. One of the issues that is obviously conflictual is the religious requirement of self-determination, which then potentially threatens the right to life under certain circumstances. Children are just one important group that requires solidarity in this sense.

Thirdly, it is about daily life: All these considerations need to be anchored in everyday life – not only with regard to the daily lives of the many whose rights are obviously violated, but also the matters that are still leading to structural “hidden disadvantages”. Actually these infringements are not so secret at all. An example that is not sufficiently seen as breach of basic human rights is the disadvantage of women as it finds its expression unequal pay. A permanently occurring question has to ask if it can be justifiable that collective agreements are not possible anymore and it has to evaluate in which ways they are increasingly undermined.

Fourth, the question of political responsibility must be re-visited. This refers in particular to processes of education. The responsible citizen, capable and ready to participate is certainly a widely used catchword. But it is at the same time also a question that needs to be considered in normal daily life of social work practice. This means as well that it is about the normal daily life of people – even the ordinary people. Change of society should not be moved to infinity by the fact that one cares first only about “really serious cases”. Just because a negative comparison is ridiculous, it is important that such extreme breaches can not least happen, because we easily ignore minor injuries – and this means also that we have to take the violations of the small ones, the children more serious. We easily assume a natural superiority of the West, the adult , the men of the professions etc. And we forget them equally easily, because we often emphasise the rights of “the disadvantaged” without further reflection: multiculturalism, anti-globalization, freedom of religion, transsexuality, the conflictuality  – important issues to reflect upon without neglecting the highly conflictual, and often explosive content.

And yet it moves – Galileo Galilei supposedly said those words. It does not matter whether he said it or not. Social work, generally, the social professions have finally (again) realise that they have to move more and they have to move in more fundamental ways.

[1]            Rough translation of an article, published in Sozial Extra 7|8, 2013

[2]            One may think of gender policies in the name of Roman-Catholic fundamentalism – this saves from reflecting on more or less distant regions, for instance dominated by Islam.

[3]            Such regionalisation is indirectly suggesting that the real reason can be found within these countries.

Elfin Dances, to be Performed by Elephants

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

After it had been Time to say Good-bye and after it had been Time to say Goodbye. Again some time later …

…. – it surely had been a strange feeling, coming back to the country in which I lived for so many years, on the occasion of a conference concerning EU-issues – the Symposim “Drives of Regionalism and Integration in Europe and Asia“.

However, returning meant not least to go for the first time to the Gate Theatre in Dublin, where Ibsen’s The enemy of the people had been performed.

The program booklet interestingly states as “main topic” the question of democracy and the right of one indvidual claiming the right of cicil disobedience.

But then, for me, something came up on a deeper level.

Quoting Ibsen from the Gutenberg-text on the Internet

Peter Stockmann. A man with a family has no right to behave as you do. You have no right to do it, Thomas.

Dr. Stockmann. I have no right! There is only one single thing in the world a free man has no right to do. Do you know what that is?

Peter Stockmann. No.

Dr. Stockmann. Of course you don’t, but I will tell you. A free man has no right to soil himself with filth; he has no right to behave in a way that would justify his spitting in his own face.

And we find also the following section:

Mrs. Stockmann. Well, one would not give you credit for much thought for your wife and children today; if you had had that, you would not have gone and dragged us all into misfortune.

Dr. Stockmann. Are you out of your senses, Katherine! Because a man has a wife and children, is he not to be allowed to proclaim the truth-is he not to be allowed to be an actively useful citizen—is he not to be allowed to do a service to his native town!

Mrs. Stockmann. Yes, Thomas—in reason.

Aslaksen. Just what I say. Moderation in everything.

Mrs. Stockmann. And that is why you wrong us, Mr. Hovstad, in enticing my husband away from his home and making a dupe of him in all this.

Sure, there are various layers, food for thought.

Not least the integrating role and function of the family. And looking at Ibsen’s play, we learn about the two sides: integrating, i.e. requiring subordination; but also integrating by way of “integer solidarity”, unconditional love and trust, the production and provision of integrity.

The question is also about democracy and opportunism and the meaning of individuals fighting for something that they see as their “individual conviction”, against marjority rule and “exceptionalism”- as said this is stated in the (by the way: completely overpriced) program booklet. We read – and hear also in the play:

After all, we are a democratic country. Now, God knows in ordinary times I’d agree a hundered per cent with anybody’s right to say anything. But these are not ordinary times. Nations have crises and so do towns …’

And indeed it can be seen – probably not only in Irland – as matter of

our own broken little country, at a time when leadership and integrity are called upon, an inconceivable time when the many must take the consequences for the risks taken by the few.

There is then at least a third point – a question:

Who is actually the “enemy”. Aren’t we all – at least occasionally – claiming to be exactly that: individuals, not opportunistically subordinating ourselves but doing things our own way? Somewhat stubbornly following what we think is the right thing to do?
It surely comes back to the point mentioned earlier, with reference to the program booklet: the question if “one” can claim superiority, if an individual can claim to be right, ignoring the right of the majority …, the right to be wrong.
But in its simple statement this easily overlooks one matter, admittedly one that does not allow being answered in a simple way:
Isn’t this majority in many cases simply reduced by charismatic leaders to an amalgamation of individualists?
Perhaps the most telling is in Ibsen’s play the quasi-appeal to the common wealth, well presented in the Gate’s performance, adding the speech by the mayor who clearly “sells” the idea of individual wealth as matter of a collective good.
Now, if any economist needs teaching material on the plausibility and wrongness of liberalism, if any applied social science academic needs proof of the shortsightedness of the own liberalist thinking, I can only recommend a visit to the Gate theatre’s performance. – The task: learning how to be able to enjoy a “we-meal”.

May well be that we all think we are standing up – while we can be easily convinced that we are sitting in the same boat. Perhaps we should more think about sitting around the same table, for the said “we-meal”, however easily accepting as unquestionable that some get substantially more while others are actually sitting also around the table, but they are sitting on the floor, only allowed to pick up the bread crumbs.

It is true – alluding to some expression in Ruppert’s Beethoven-biography: that sometimes elfin dances – the differentiated academic analysis – needs to be performed by elephants. There is indeed always the danger of a traitor – and there is alwyas the question if we recognise early enough if it isn’t oursevles who are respnsibile for The Taking of Christ. (Yes, the National Gallery of Ireland is surely worth visiting.)

The Gate showed with a really fine performance that a bold message – the dance of an elephant – can well provoke the fine-tuned questions of elfs.

SPACETIME

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Of course, even if thinking and especially academic thinking is characterised by its systematic and strategic analytical dimension, it is surely also influenced by coincidences – contingent occurrences that are determined by what is happening around us, what is actually by our mere positioning in the world visible, perceivable to us.

And one of these coincidences may well be my recent return from a multi-million city, the 2nd largest city of a multi-million country and occupying a rank of 5 to 10[1] on the list of the largest cities of a multi-billion world.[2]

But it is not simply this experience that brings space in some specific way my attention – others are since some time engaging in social science: be it the geographer David Harvey, or the (amongst others:) urban theorist Mike David, looking at the Planet of Slums.

*******

It is early July now – I booked the ticket for the Museum of Fine Arts some time back. If I would not have this ticket, determining even the time slot of my visit, I probably would not go there – well, Egon Schiele is actually not my favourite artist, and his rather blunt view on nudity and exhibition of himself[3] would not invite me to leave to Hősök tere on this nice summer day. Or are his 170 self-portraits actually more about honesty than about exhibitionism? Honesty ablout the search for identity at times when society itself lost identity?

Anyway, the ticket is booked, and it is also a little bit of an obligatory act for the art historian that is dormant in me 😉

And there I am: the bright, sunny day left behind the doors through which I entered the gallery – behind the doors now being outside.

I am actually fascinated, drawn to or even into the painting that is right opposite of the door through which I enter the even darker room on the ground floor of the eclectic neoclassical building:

Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant from 1912

It is well known and, having seen it frequently in books, on post-cards and on the internet, I always asked my self why it is such a widely reproduced painting. Seeing now the original, and seeing it stepping out of the dark surrounding, I know immediately what causes the fascination: space.[4]

There is something that goes much beyond the painting which is actually a rather simple small composition: the painter depicting himself against the background of a lantern plant; the person captured with its contradiction of a relatively bright appearance of the distorted and grave face.

The upper body stands sharp contrast – in the bold dark suit against the shiny background, a space that has something playful, given by the lantern flower.

And after the recent visit this flower adds surely to the fascination – a kind of call from another world.

Not these contrasts but the order of space cause an irritation that arouses an utmost positive sensation of the view.

It is difficult to grasp – photography fails to picture it, and words surely fail too. It is a dialectical tension of mutual capturing and conquest. The question is if the person occupies, surrounds the space or if the space surrounds, occupies the person. Is it this loss of clarity about space and its occupation, these ‘blurring borders’ of hegemony that cause this outstanding face?

In the words of the Museum of Fine Arts’ smart phone application we look into

[a] face filled with torment, dishevelled hair standing on end, and hands clenched in anguish.

It is the question – but nevertheless it is a question that is not asked and that still seems to be answered without a single word.

Space then becomes more and actually different to what geography proposes. It emerges as immediate social space in its genuine meaning:

In the decade preceding World War I, Vienna was still an imperial city enjoying an Indian summer of refined sensual pleasures for the privileged few. However to later generations it appears rather as a laboratory febrile ‘end-of-the-world experiments’ (Karl Kraus) then a model for a multicultural, pluralistic and incredibly multifaceted society.

(Sármány-Parsons, Ilona: Vienna, City of Eros and Thanatos; in: Egon Schiele and his Age. Masterpieces from the Leopold Museum Vienna. Exhibition Catalogue. 26 June -29 September 2013; Budapest: Museum of fine Arts; 9-37; here: 10)

Strolling through the exhibition, I am another time convinced: Social science can hardly do without looking at arts as a mirror of society, surely not showing the entirety , but depicting some important elements of the Zeitgeist. And playing with it – turning space and time around, against each other …; moving in space and being moved by spaces … – and thus exploring the dialectical tension of mutual capturing and conquest of space, movement in space and thus time.

Look at The Hermits, also from 1912; or the Klimtian Portrait of Henryka Cohn by Richard Gerstl (1908)

Sure, all this is about Early Viennese expressionism – and we learn from the exhibitions comment

The secession was still enjoying its golden age when the new generation appeared on the scene in Vienna, who’s members were eager to move on from the kind of stylised art that smothered everything in ornament and refined elegance, and which was turning the Secession, in a majority of cases, into nothing more than decoration. The desire to replenish form with content – symbols and emotions – flooded forth with elemental power where som artist were concerned (Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka) but trickled as more of an undercurrent with others (Egon Schiele, Max Oppnheimer). By replacing the gently curving contours with robust field of colour, the new generation broke the dominant trend that ruled around the year 1900. Carefully evaluated balances of colour and form were discarded, and in their place, in Schiele’s art around 1910, came an expression of form that was motivated by feelings and instincts that welled from deep within.

*******

The lantern flower from Schiele’s portrait had been mentioned – and there may be more to it: aren’t lanterns also offering guidance? Aren’t they also offering security, hope – the hope of moving towards the light at the end of the tunnel, its perception always suggesting that it is not the light of the train entering from the other end.

So we return to the catalogue from which we learn that

[a]fter 1903, and more pronouncedly after 1905, Viennese art was more influenced by the many foreign works that were shown at exhibitions in the city than had been the case earlier. These works unveiled stylistic trends which could no longer be judged according to traditional critical categories based on mimesis. The principal yardsticks for judgement now became originality and the boldness of a picture’s formal experiment.

(Sármány-Parsons, Ilona: Vienna, City of Eros and Thanatos; in: Egon Schiele and his Age. Masterpieces from the Leopold Museum Vienna. Exhibition Catalogue. 26 June -29 September 2013; Budapest: Museum of fine Arts; 9-37; here: 22)

Thus we may say that Schiele is only looking for the light, being caught by the lack of direction; Anton Faistauer only a little bit later (in 1913) being confronted with the answer, with one answer. At least this is what he suggests in his painting

Street towards Duerstein (1913)

But this one answer is actually only focussing the diffuse helplessness – confronting us with the alternative of the coming and the going. Facing the original we are challenged to decide: are we coming, or are we actually going? What is the end, the goal – and (how) can determine it … – glimpses only can be seen, vague, very vague. But at least these glimpses of Cubism can be seen, shining through while the era is facing in reality the loss of hope, answering with the roar of a wounded animal.

What happened a short time later did give one answer: the answer that is most definitely a non-answer, an option we should never consider again as it will not lead us anywhere!!

And cum grano salis this also the question I had been facing recently – not as question of war, of such a war.. – but the question of the clash of cultures: standstill and development and development in which way ….? The question Lv, Xuxiang and their mates will have to answer …

The question that stands in multi-million cities and villages of a view people alike.

*******

I return to the office, walk buried in thoughts along the Andrássy út, the noble street, street of the former nobles, then and now the street of embassies; the street that celebrated the turn of the century by opening the first metro in the year 1896; the street that, today divides the Pest of the ordinary people and the heroes by its stretch of noble shops: the international brands, spacetimes of today’s nobility: global efforts of maintaining hegemony; global efforts of tying down the not of governance that needs to be opened with a complex strategy, taking up four ends at the very same time: the four-in-one strategy, that constitutes hegemony and counter-hegemony alike – Frigga Haug worked extensively on such strategy.

It is  long walk – listening to Ludovico Einaudi’s Divenire is accompanying me ….

[1]            The ranks are extremely difficult to determine – relevant lists show different figures without allowing an insight in clear definitions of relevant criteria.

[2]            According to http://countrymeters.info/ the data are as follows:

07-07-2013 20:56:26: 7 105 642 573 (Current world population); 3 583 606 273 (Current male population); 3 522 036 300 (Current female population); for China: 1 361 022 180 (Current population); 706 618 530 (Current male population); 654 403 665 (Current female population)

[3]            says the blogger … – … Hic Rhodus, hic salta!

[4]            Admittedly it is also the way of exhibiting the painting. I saw it earlier in Vienna, without being caught in the same way.

Once upon a time – and everything changed … !?!?!?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, social quality, thoughts on life and its philosophy, Uncategorized

A day at the end of June, 8:36 a.m. – high-speed train G7381 with the name “harmony” brings me from Shanghai to Hangzhou.

Apparently it had been Marco Polo who said

下来有苏杭

上 有天堂

and indeed, it seems to be heaven on earth. I am moving there on the ground, at the earthly speed of nearly 350 km …

… outside the built-up areas, the fields, the streets and the huge green-house areas – passing like images of a dream, appearing and disappearing like the clouds one may see when looking out of the window of an aircraft … 350, 300 …

… 250, 200, 180, 140, 90, 80, 55, 30, 20, 10, 9, 7, 4 … the train stops …

********

… it is a while ago that I lived in a town in Germany – mind, not a village, not a city: a town. There had been approximately 25,000 inhabitants and occasionally we went to a city nearby: a place with probably 100,000 inhabitants. Well, we thought it would be a city. At least there had been an opera house and theatre and I had been privileged, occasionally being able – finding transport and having the money – to go there. I had been a child then and this is one of the memories I am fond off; one of the things I thoroughly enjoyed during my childhood; perhaps I enjoyed it so much because it was a little perforation in an environment that seemed to be smooth and that actually had been smooth, any attempt to escape only leading on slippery ground that did require permanent movement, but did not allow progressing.

A bit later this tiny, seamless world had been bursting – for me in the same way as for the many who turned to the streets at the end of the 1960s: against the aggressors in Vietnam, against the German media-giant Springer who had been one of the gofers of the aggressors in the far-east; against the Gaullist system in France; but also in favour of matters: of Bloch’s notion of the Principle of Hope and Marcuse’s realist utopia, proposing

You should sleep nine hours without dreams. Then you have the day for dreams.

And we had been moved in favour of A.S. Neill’s ideas on education, seeing

[t]he function of a child is to live his/her own life, not the life that his/her anxious parents think he/she should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educators who thinks they knows best

and seeing this not only as right of children but as right of human beings in general. And those of us, who had been more radical, saw it as particular right of the oppressed: the working class, women, migrants …

Another short while later, after laying down sound foundation stones of my future academic life, I actually lived …, well in a city you may say, probably nearing 200,000 inhabitants …

… and another bit later I began floating around … – real cities, reasonably spread across the globe. After a while I stopped bothering about numbers – perhaps an exception being the time I worked in Taipei which I found remarkable not really because of the number but because of a kind of de-pressing tightness; and an exception at some stage Munich – the first time when I lived there I have had the impression that this would be the real eternal city: eternal vividness if one accepts that 24 hours, exactly one day, is eternity. There seemed to be no real rest: some time the entire city comes to a respite. Moscow perhaps had been another exception at some stage – but it may well be that I had been actually impressed by the seize of the building of the university in which I lived: one of the Vysotki, the “seven sisters” is surely something remarkable …

… travelling, moving on …, at least moving from one place to another, between large places and small spots … and though there is a lack of stability when it comes to the side to which I actually had to leave the bed, there had the stability of my brain: never really loosing the direction, always answering the wake-up call in the hotels in the correct language (even when talking to an automated system), and indeed always leaving the bed to the right side – knowing that it has to be at the end lead to the left side anyway.

********

A day at the end of June – Shanghai is now left behind – I spent only a short time there, about two weeks, teaching at SHU – but still it allowed me to explore a little bit of the city …, no: time to explore the contradictions of a place which surely is a city. Apparently one cannot rely on figures when it comes to its population – but what does it matter if it is 20 million or 24 million. Aren’t a few million people at the end small differences in such place? The really exciting part is actually another: that this city – probably like any other city – is a multitude of social places where

the social is an outcome of the interaction between people (constituted as actors) and their constructed and natural environment. Its subject matter refers to people’s interrelated productive and reproductive relationships. In other words, the constitutive interdependency between processes of self-realisation and processes governing the formation of collective identities is a condition for the social and its progress or decline.[1]

And they do it in very different ways.

The baseline is that many of these are Chinese citizens, but not registered in Shanghai. The baseline is that there are many foreigners – not allowed to work but nevertheless working, even paying taxes. The baseline is that this mega-city is gigantic hub, lacking clarity though its different nods of traditionalism and modernity, poverty and affluence, paralysis and vividness are entangled by an amazing network of a progressive metro system with 13 lines (though line 12 does actually not [yet] exist), covering 439 kilometres.

Any move that is guided by some basic attentiveness discourages us to speak of a city as living space. Although people move around, although the clash of poverty and affluence is permanently present, the actual life is taking part in some other regions – and it is surprising …

********

Actually the original plan for these months had been to live in Rome, the so-called eternal city. And instead of settling in a new life, I continue floating around. So instead of change there is continuity in my life: travelling, occasional concerts, galleries.

I am so lucky that Lv and Xuxiang show me around. Or should I say, allow me to live a little bit with them, joining their life.

Lv herself is one of these sweet Asian girls – matching every prejudiced expectation: looking like the blossom of lotus, her voice being like the sound of the flute she played the one night when I got known to her, and having eyes shining like jade [actually I am so ignorant that I do not even know the colour of her eyes for a long time; and then it turned out that they are actually brown … – yes, there is brown jade]. Well she is really good looking and a really lovely person, leaving poetical embellishments aside. And this young woman showed me so many places: galleries, concerts, the small old shopping centres, most beautiful gardens and a modern department store.

Though she knows exactly where we are going, it is more strolling around – and going may mean walking, going by taxi, taking the metro are sitting in the back of the Rikscha (though not a real one, but its motorised version).

… and it is surprising indeed …:

While being a modern and fast developing place, the tradition cannot be overlooked. Of course, it is the tradition of temples and the ornaments of some of the buildings. The parks still being a spot for many – and actually walking through them gives occasionally the impression of too many going there. But even if they are busy they are a kind of oasis – an oasis by contrasting the busy hassle and bustle of this multi-million project of togetherness; an oasis by contrasting the smoothness of the straight-lined modern business centre with the romantic bridges across the small ponds, never just a line from one spot to another – instead they are angular constructs that allow engagement with space, provoking playful rendezvous with nature and the self and others. Sometimes music is playing in the background, coming from loudspeakers – or is it actually the singing of birds? Or even only an illusion: the memory of the flute play of the one evening, of the tender sound of the Guqin?

And the parks, the small tables on the streets in the quartiers are an oasis as they let us forget the ere seize of the mega cities, show us where life simply flows like the water after having left the spring and forming a little trickle before it is getting lost in the large streams.

In some way all is of special attractiveness where it is remarkably “dislocated” from real life of contemporary realities and still visible as its vivid part. As the middle-aged woman, sitting in front of the house in the presumably poor area near the posh 1933 shopping and arts centre. Somebody else – her mother, a woman from the neighbourhood …? – holding the sheets of music. And the woman sitting on a simple chair, holding the instrument – a pipa – on her lap and creating a harmony that is simply “round”, content and resting in itself – resting in order to allow permanency of movement.

Exotic one may say. One may also say it is just the visibility of the daily tensions and the beauties that are even entailed in what we usually assess as something negative: tensions.

Some time during my visit I will have the opportunity to look at the sheet of music for the Guqin – it looks a little bit like a technical construction plan, the instruction for an arithmetic equation. It is so different from Western sheets of music – and it makes me think about “hearing maths”, something I had been reading some tome ago in a Russian journal.

For the layperson it may look like a plan that presents the blueprint for one of these monumental metro stations – some of them are surely as large as the core of the small village that served me once as home.

And it is this a paradox of continuity of personal life and societal life alike. As much as

the territorial state emerged concurrent with the deterritoriali- zation of political economy and geographical imagination,[2]

as much we can see that we are personally increasingly defensive of our own little territories, many of us having lost the sense and ability of genuine sociability. I will come back to it later – under the title the bowl of rice for every one but not for all.

We see this difference also in the new ways of life and living – still the old patterns of communities – but as they loose their strong inherent coherence that defines their closure from inside, that are now increasingly defined as gated communities: the inner wall replaced by the outer wall, the knowledge and compliance with moral requirements and orders, the acquaintance with a common and more or less unique language …, all this replaced by a single piece of metal or a chip or a PIN, opening the gate. And still there are the same things happening inside: the play of chess or card games, making music or listening to it …, and match making, different in forms but following this language that is written between the lines, the meaning that is standing behind the words – and cannot be found in any dictionary. But still

the interaction between people (constituted as actors) and their constructed and natural environment

follows different rules and although

[i]Its subject matter refers to people’s interrelated productive and reproductive relationships

this does not say anything about the concrete forms that it takes.

Recognising the increasing meaning of the patterns of the Westernly-enlightened world, does not necessarily suggest levelling of difference. On the contrary it is – be it pleasing or scary or both at the same time – of special interest in which way the different offers merge, evolve into something new as dance on the squares: unconditional participation and equally unconditional dedication; the understanding of rights and duties, or righteousness and wrongness … – it is also the matter of bringing the different resources together: many shops actually being workshops in the true sense – selling the repair of nearly everything, the perfection of recycling and ideally the interaction with the customer who is present while the way of repairing is looked after and the actual work undertaken. This is where productivity is so limited – and where the social character of production is so genuinely present. And this is where productivity is so high – where the social character of production is so genuinely part of what is produced …

– … like in water heavens – but this is something that will retain our thought much later.

********

Continuities in a life – hearing and reading in e-mails about the post that arrives home, in Rome. Being there in the Far East, I look forward to going home though it has to wait another couple of weeks – and then I will be there only for few days: Arriving home, i.e. in Rome, like I came home to Aghabullogue in my previous life: short meetings, changing clothes, checking post – that is what a director, even an academic director does, right?

– Anyway, after having been strolling around in the megacities different villages with my friend, I look also forward to spending the other day again together with her and her friends. We will go to Suzhou … continuities of explorations and excitements.

But before going there, I am attending a one-day conference at SHU: sitting in some large place: the conference hall that is part of the library building, listening to presentations and at the same time writing – multitasking-abilities of the equipment being increasingly mirrored by the need of the operator to follow in the same mode. Well, in this case the presentations had been more than boring and I do not have a clue why they invited these people to speak – all somewhat Americans: “genuine” Americans from the “second generation” (i.e. the ones who are successors of those who conquered the country about 200 years ago and drove the Indians to the deserts and mountains, if they did not completely genocide them – well, even if language does not fully appreciate the fact: genocide always had been and will always be something that is done, and should be expressed by a verb) or people who settled there, as the Oz-Italian yank whose words had been so shallow that even dust would not have been able to find a place underneath.

********

So nothing changed? Or everything changed? What did really change? This moment, sitting there in the hall, I have increasingly (mind: italics) the impression that my “real life” is not real at all. Living in such a world where it is true what I came across long time ago as a joke, somebody saying to me on departure

Had been good meeting you. Look forward reading you.

A joke I thought as the person I met actually meant he would read more articles and books of me instead of actually seeng me. Yesterday somebody saying

Best regards from Nadia

– short hesitation. Yanfang saw it, mentioned the surname:

I just exchanged mails with her and she … .

And right now receiving a mail from Poznan, somebody asking me to join some board: I listened to your presentation in Moscow and …

I would be honoured if you agree to accept my invitation …

No, it is not about being real “player” in this global world – what actually really changed is that I feel like a cue ball on a playing field that is much too large for me and probably too large for all the other players, feeling somewhat crunched between and by different players. And having the feeling that it is not just me who is crunched but that there is something and so much going on that is completely out of control – though processes of controlling are mutually exercised.

During this conference I had been approached by somebody – a “low-position assistant”, asking a question on logistics – and I answered, showing her the staff card with my name …

I know who you are …

Well, then she obviously knows more than I do: perfectly trained. But also: You are your name and well, I will come back to it later – they are so meaningful here, every word well chosen: the meaning and what do I want my son/daughter be, that is what is expressed by the name – not looking back as the O’s and von’s and van der’s; not looking at the profession of the forefathers of the Thatchers and Muellers. We are looking into the future, seeing that

you are wisdom, reflecting before you act

– I think that is the full name of this one queen I can call my friend…; and Yanfang actually being with her name a “queen”, but I know only the first part of her name …

Anyway, I had been sitting in the conference hall, writing my article against “knowledge from books” and I should possibly have added some sentences against approaches suggesting one could learn creativity from books, fancy power point presentations and shallow-fancy phrases. Then I had to stop before the conference came to an end as I had to watch the time, having been asked to join for a special dinner (very formal and not the best for me as vegetarian). But I stopped writing at that stage anyway as there had been another beautiful music performance at the end – classical Chinese music … – after that a very short break and some Chinese youngsters playing pop music …: loud, though it had been in some way soft rock music (well known songs – the Western charts), it had been somewhat like hammering it in the brains …, and the Americans around, cold when before the beautiful music had been played, now moving their body, underpinning each bar, seeing their culture hammered into the minds of people, into a culture, like they are building skyscrapers in Pudong, pillars that are keeping up the MacD-, Starbucks- and KFC-culture on the ground.

Yes, pillars maintaining their foundation …, a world standing on its head. No, I didn’t cry though I had been actually near to it; I didn’t scream though I felt like a scream being possibly a means to maintain sanity – and I did not even kick the guy sitting next to me: an Indian-American, hammering with the others against his knees – though I had been near to kick. Even much, much worse, I mentioned my body moving too … .

********

… and I walked a little later, on the occasion of another ceremonial event, across the carpet – yes, a red one, perfectly ignoring the flashes of the cameras, smiling and waving: somebody telling me what to do …

It is only a show …

again I did not cry, scream, kick …; I tried to enjoy the show of which I had been one of the involuntary players.

While being driven to one of these events, another small facet comes to my mind. The colour of the cars –those vehicles used on such official occasions: black. As black is also the colour of moaning in so many cultures, I am wondering if it used for these events as an expression of government bodies, officialdom, academia, business etc, expressing the wretchedness of the loss of ground.

So far I came across only one exception when it came to these cars: Cuba. An old car, the driver probably having many other jobs. I also remember that we discussed the upcoming meeting with the driver while he brought us from the ministry of culture to the meeting of the Centro de Investigaciones de Política Internacional  – government buildings, by the way, that would surely not have been recognised as such (though I have to admit that I know this also from other countries: the actual work of ministries done in houses and quarters where one would not expect it).

********

Sure, all this is so far presented in a black and white kaleidoscope, a burning glass that does not even allow seeing shadows let alone the truly colourful joys of honest academic debates.

Such debates I experience actually one of these days in Hangzhou – finally meeting a colleague with whom I had been in contact for a long time.

I am collected from the airport and the first thing after arrival is that one of the students in the “office of the professor” – while he does not use it after moving to another campus, two master students can use it for the work on their varied topics – offers me something to drink.

You want coffee of tea?

I decide for the tea, of course, and I am told about the special green tea here in the city. I get it from a paper cup. Not the moment of celebrating tea, but still admittedly a really lovely taste of the Longjing tea. I assume somewhere there is a special language – as there I a special language for wine. Being ignorant of such a language, I can only try to grasp the by the words fully flowered, tasting sweet-bitter. I take great pleasure in this refreshing taste and also enjoyed chatting with An – a very open young student, telling me about her work but also asking about what my interests are.

It is not long and my colleague arrives – my expectation from the previous cooperation is not matched: a joyful, more or less young man, very energetic, stretching his hand out to me and greeting me with a warm, welcoming laugh. He tells me a little bit about the program of the next two and a half days: the work, the lunches and dinners, the excursion to the garden and the West Lake, and he presents the structure of the departments, schools and institutes to me. I am standing in front of the large organisation chart: public administration, private and cooperative economy, governance … – mixing in ways that are unknown from my usual Western environment.

– One thing may be remarkable in a side remark: the party is part of it – as party cell of the university. But it is not mentioned.

Later it will be mentioned – when we sit for a formal lunch. Formal means that the various representatives are present. For me is surprising what the locals probably do not even recognise: the presence of students and administrative staff. Formal means that we are eating together – my neighbour Xian-guo, Dean and professor, makes me aware of the actual meaning of something that I always get pleasure from without having yet thought why it is so delightful: the we-eating, the different dishes, permanently new ones being brought, exchanged by other dishes, all standing on the large glass in the middle of the table, turned around according to gusto, the “power” as matter of taking the liberty to look for whatever one wants, the “power” as matter of consideration on the wishes and doings of the others. – I cannot refrain from making a side remark, remembering several similar occasions when some Westerners had been sitting around such “rotating table”, keenly looking on what they yearned for, forgetting everything around them, as much as they forgot that communication is not about telling stories bunt about the

interaction between people (constituted as actors) and their constructed and natural environment.

Earlier I wrote that we might come back to the bowl of rice for every one but not for all. It may well be the bowl of rice we all like to have as coming with the meal. This, and the bowl of soup, is in the Asian concept of meal apparently the only part that is “belonged” by individuals, personal property that we Westerners had been extensively clinging on after the curse of the apple, bringing individualism and the claim of property rights over humankind; and after this blight had been multiplied by the capitalist enlightenment – an enlightenment that allowed citizenship only as precondition but not as actual consequence of freedom.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

– even Kant with his categorical imperative would and could not have dared to think first of the brother or sister. And liberty had been first needed – even if it had been only in order to abandon it, to treat it as freestyle and thus as residuum as soon as equality of the contracting parties had been reached.

********

Back to the lunch, having been a formal lunch meant many toasts – I had to learn that it sometimes has to do suffice to take the glass without actually drinking. Toasts, clinking glasses – another we-experience but also a matter of individuals: somebody getting up from the other side of the table, welcoming somebody else, cheering each other up … – and finally allowing now the party coming into play: after the exchange of 12 name cards between 12 people and at least 24 toasts later, the topic changes: we talk about the Great Chairman. Yes, ever present – and yes, also a matter of critique, debate, search for solutions – and questioning.

There is a tiny detail, worth mentioning. It is abut the name cards – in the West we are usually talking about business cards, right? But there is so much in a person; and here is so much in a name – although it may be a wish, a dream the parents have for their children. And although these wishes are of course about wealth, security, saturation, they are still very much about the wisdom of matching the silk hair with the silk shawl – just wait a while and I will explain ….

********

– This critique, debate, search for solutions – and questioning is surely not the same as I mention, coming back to Lv and Xuxiang. And actually earlier the week comments by my students gave me some insight into expectations – and disappointments. Few of them follow here:

  • As through several classes, we’ve already have our own understanding about social, social quality and the structure. For justice and quality, so many years I do not recognize the difference between them, because they always been translated to the same word, now I finally catch the subtle nuance. The whole class ,I guess it not only has been an interesting thing, but also the way to teach us how to theorizing what we observed, and this is the serious part.
  • The way Peter teach is quite different from the Chinese way, it gives us more chances to present what we think, but not take it all from the book. I think it’s more flexible, through this we learn the course more rapid.
  • This foreign teacher is serious and earnest, the theory and opinion he gives is not just other people’s, part of them maybe came from his own observation and contemplation, so its quite fresh and original.
  • The summer semester is short, but I’ve learn things, especially the theory about social equality and social responsibility, these are the hot issue through the country, what we learn in class make us rethink the social policy in our own country, not daily discussion but to theorizing the events.
  • The first time to take a English course, and I followed it through, as a student from engineering, the most important thing Peter gives me is the way to analyze the incidents in our daily life, from a social scientific perspective.
  • This class has been useful. Now I have a general idea about these several definition like society and sociology. Also, we learned a new way of thinking.
  • It is not everyday we have a chance to get a lesson, especially everyone was given chance to do a presentation. I hope our professors in SHU could give more lessons like this.

Sure, this says more about the students and their experience in the educational system … – and also about what they experience in and want for life, it says more about this than it says about me and my teaching. And it leaves me with some contradiction. Though such statements are surely indicating some strive to break open conventional ways, I see also that many of the ways are actually already open. This critique, debate, search for solutions is surely much more open than what I experienced for so many times in these so-called open-governance circles of pseudo-critical Western lefties, where left is more about having left reason behind, having left the ground of proper consideration, instead of being a matter of political positioning.

I know, the following may easily be misunderstood – supposedly whitewashing many breaches of rights, apparently denying the problems of this country, be these the ongoing problems of what is still so often called a developing country or the new problems of an overdeveloping BRIC-country – one of these countries where bric may stand for brick: as building block or as instrument that falls on peoples’ head, neck, back or feet, striking without any care, but with its destroying energy the life of so many people. – These days I think frequently of Arrighi’s work and his analysis of “progress”: the move of the centre from Asia to Italy, to The Netherlands then, before reaching England, later taking off from there to the United States of Northern America – had not all these emergences being accompanied by these huge forces of corrosion? Not the Schumpetarian creative destruction (if we should consider something like this being real), but the destroying force of a steamroller of alleged progress. Not least a progress brought to the fore by the old superpowers. Nobody talks about the breach of human rights by capitalism – I do not mean just the obvious use of child labour etc., it is just the power of capitalism that moves into every pore of life – just as we know it already from Marx, pointing in the first volume of The Capital out that there exists a General Law of Capitalist Accumulation:

It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital. [..] This antagonistic character of capitalistic accumulation is enunciated in various forms by political economists, although by them it is confounded with phenomena, certainly to some extent analogous, but nevertheless essentially distinct, and belonging to pre-capitalistic modes of production.

And there is another point that strikes me time again – it is not the first time but I remember the same happening when I visited Cuba, Moldova, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey and others: the thinking of the Westerners. It is apparently so easy to forget – forget what one criticises in the “own” country; and so easy to forget what one acknowledges when looking at the host country from the outside. – And some may even wrap their forgetting nicely; transforming the “critique of imperialism” into the “right of the oppressed to adore the oppressor”. Sure, many find by going this way an excuse for their own lack of more fundamental critique.

********

Theatre, stages of producing oneself, not least by producing the other – without consideration, accepting the reality only to the extent to which it is result of the construction by oneself. But also without consideration of the fact of the self being equally constructed – by the constructed other. Reality is indeed more Kafkaesque the even Franz K could imagine …

– So I still dream, looking at what seems to be the only real world that is left for me: a lovely walk with the girl whose name is “you are wisdom, reflecting before you act”, and I look forward to next Saturday: I will return from Hagzhou, meet this wisdom and her friend at the people’s square and we will go to a concert, before I leave the morning, well, just after midnight, to Moscow. Lv, when we organised this, said

You will be tired.

I could only nod, but I am more tired from permanently leaving, from living between Ireland, Italy and Hungary and Greece and France and Germany and The Netherlands and China and … . No, I am actually not so much tired from travelling and calling at times a suitcase my home. It is more about being tired to live on this stage of mutual constructions, where everything has to be calculated, emerges as part of the theatre, a matter of roles to which the book had been written not just by somebody else, but even worse by an unknown author, now disguising him- and herself, claiming to be “I” and “we”, though leaving “me” and “us” actually in a world that seems to be without real exit …

…, only allowing few escapes – admittedly beautiful escapes like those to the heaven of tranquillity in the midst of 20 million+ people – a heaven of harmony in a hidden teahouse …

No, it is not paranoia (yet?); and perhaps it is not even really that anything changed. Perhaps it is just the continuation of a Diary of a Journey into Another World.

********

I am dashing across the train station, finally the silk fever got hold of me: I see a beautiful shawl in the window of one of the shops – pure silk. Seeing it, I see immediately that it is a nice present for a nice person. Actually I do not even think about the person, do not have to visualise her. I just see both matching. I look at the price tag, think about ..

… no, Sir, we do not accept credit-cards …

I ask for an ATM – and though the words are not understood, the matter at stake is understood. Soon I am nearly flying through the lines of people waiting for their train, trying not to loose my new guide out of sight: the sales person does not only show me the way to the next ATM – mind the emphasis on ATM, not so much on next (if next is understood as something that is near), she also shows me how to jump the queue, pass security gates without major stops; and she makes sure that I find the way back: the way to her shop, well the shop in which she works.

What is the link between such hunt across the main train station of a 24 million city and the following words, I quote in a new text I am working on:

Time gains a new meaning insofar as it has to be made part of considerations in its meaning of a (très) longue durée.[3] Instead, time is meaningful, not as a matter of historical consciousness, but as part of immediate practice – histoire événementielle interwoven with and welding with the longue durée and vice versa.[4]

It is rather simple: even in something like this scene, which may well be seen as buying binge on my siede and rip-off on the other side, there is at times an amazing harmony: the perceived beauty, the expected match, the transposition into market relationships and the strive for natural survival for which income – coming out of the pockets of people like me – is needed. At least it seems that life, living is not taking place outside of this relationship but is immediate part of it. It is difficult to define, de-fine…, fine with its two meanings, find …

It is something that occupies frequently my mind these days. Here in China – perhaps more in general: in Asia – the idea of harmony plays such an important role. It is guiding social policy as much as it is already a principle that is guiding arts – I will come back to painting at a later stage. But here I am – again – simply stuck by the ideas, the feelings …: listening to the soft sounds that are so characteristic for the traditional local music, the harmony of the gardens that play such an important role also today, the silk that is so common here for dresses of different kind and the long soft hair of my friend that I felt the one day on my arm, when we stood in the museum, looking closely at the scrimshaw of the traditional exhibits.

– Only a matter of the past and the diehards? Only a matter of wealth and for the wealthy? Something else comes to my mind – from the same text I am working on, concerned with Green Growth: the attempt to emphasise the temporal dimension of dialectics.

Rather than understanding dialectics in the (simplified) triangular relationship of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis (which, of course, remains as basis principle in place) it is here fundamentally historicised by way of looking at past, future and presence. With view on the organisations and the sector in question it means to acknowledge that they are

  • in principle rooted in pre-modern frameworks – as matter of the past

  • anticipate potentially post-contemporary features and requirements – as matter of the future

  • and – equally potentially – implementing these under the (at times recalcitrant) conditions – as matter of the presence.

And what is in this new text said in regard of CSO’s and the so-called third sector is cum grano salis probably also true for any kind of social action – and we remember the social being defined as

outcome of the interaction between people (constituted as actors) and their constructed and natural environment. Its subject matter refers to people’s interrelated productive and reproductive relationships. In other words, the constitutive interdependency between processes of self-realisation and processes governing the formation of collective identities is a condition for the social and its progress or decline.

Sure, the instruments are different, but the tune is not so different at all … And we have to look at the many untold, even unknown histories on every day’s culture: tea and coffee, silk and wool, eating with chopsticks or cutlery, haircuts and the way of walking – actually all these hi–stories are not untold and surely well known. But then they had been nicely wrapped, making us forget how much they are reflecting out daily life, i.e.

people’s interrelated productive and reproductive relationships.

********

Finally I arrive in the hotel – a modern place next to the university. And I am not so sure anymore about what I just wrote before. Is it really just about different instruments, playing very similar tunes? I enter the room – the soft beat of the song, asking to

Take me to your heart

sounds as strange as the Lipton tea tastes strange.

Hiding from the rain and snow

Trying to forget but I won’t let go

Looking at a crowded street

Listening to my own heart beat

…

The recent chat with Xiaohong on painting – comparing European and Asian arts – comes to my mind. Talking with him, I mention what Lv told me, commenting on a painting we saw in Sozhou:

It is so difficult. It takes a long time to learn this kind of painting.  One has to learn to breathe every stroke with the brush.

And as Xiaohong, an elderly man, develops: it is part of a complex cultural pattern.

This painting is modest in colours and forms, modest in the use of space. It comes from the utmost inner of the artist and is not about exploring, let alone about encapsulating space. It is about devotion, developing an inner harmony – a harmony between humans and the environment in which they live.

********

The evening before my flight leaves Shanghai Pudong International, I experience this so vividly – when I go with my friends to the Water Heavens by Tan Dun; a bit more then an hours drive outside of Shanghai. I am admittedly a bit nervous – finally I have to get the flight few hours later.

Still, it is truly the experience that

music can be seen and architecture can be heard.

This is what Water Heavens is about. I may add to this sentence, that I red in the program brochure, that the move of the bodies plays melodies and the melodies emerge from the amalgamation of bodies and environment.

Sure, this harmony (or disharmony) of mergers and exclusions, of enrichment between different cultures and the difficulties can sometimes be easily translated into very trivial problems. For instance the eating with chopsticks. Not that it would cause problems for me. However, when it comes to the point of spreading butter, imported from Denmark or New Zealand, with chopsticks on the Délifrance-bread, it requires some creativity. And it is surely much less exciting than the eating of Lotus-flowers as little snack as I did while we had been strolling around the streets of the mega-cities.

********

A day at the end of June, 1:45 p.m. – Aeroflot flight SU207, nameless, bringing me from Shanghai to Moscow. We are moving with a groundspeed of exactly 349 kilometres – the plane is taking off. Heaven on earth will soon be underneath. Underneath also the built-up areas, the fields, the streets and the huge greenhouse areas and the cities. – Now all is passing in the memories, if I will manage to sleep? Thoughts blurring with dreams – those that are not kept for the days when we are going to change life, lives and living conditions. Dreams like those that bring us solutions rather than asking us to work towards them – and surely they have their genuine right too:

You know, when I was in primary school my dream was playing the flute and sitting on a cow near west lake when it was raining, because I always think there will appear a handsome god, make your dream come true.

What still stays with me is small, and still this megacity and the ultra- development cannot easily destroy it: the souvenir of the soft voice of a young woman who is searching, full of energy, her way in this mix and blurring of different worlds – and finding it not only for herself; the memory of the soft sound from the Guqin, played by her boyfriend when we visited together the tea house: still determined to go the harsh way of studying abroad, studying for himself, for contributing to the advancement of science and his fellow citizens. And what still stays with me is … – si, un mazzo di fiori … – and even if it will soon be withered, remembering the smell, remembering the two friends may be one of the contributions helping to move on, and helping to slow down …. – making stages to spaces of real life again.

********

谢谢

– I look on the tray in front of me; I look up, the airhostess looks friendly at me …, and I correct myself

спасибо

… she smiles at me …

Opening another chapter of this book of which we are all part though frequently forgetting this somewhat funny feeling of living in a history book – the book of which everybody is him- and herself author.

[1]            van der Maesen, Laurent J.G/Walker, Alan, 2012: Social Quality and Sustainability; in: van der Maesen, Laurent J.G/Walker, Alan [eds.]: Social Quality. From Theory to Indicators; Houndsmills: Palgrave 260

[2]            Steinberg, P. E., 2009: Sovereignty, Territory, and the Mapping of Mobility: A View from the Outside. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99[3]: 467–495: here: 468

[3]            Understood quite in line with the work presented by the École des Annales

[4]            Herrmann, Peter, forthcoming: Green Growth – Critical Perspective on Third-Sector Development; in: Anastasiadis, Maria [ed.]: ECO-WISE. Ecologically oriented Work Integration Social Enterprises; there quoted from: Herrmann, Peter, forthcoming: Do we really need Human Rights; Rodrigue, Barry et altera [eds.]: NN; University of California Press

Poverty of the Welfare State or: Poverty: construction – de-construction – and losing the battle

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, social quality, works, projects, publications

The following notes had been made in preparation of the contrubution to the Spring Symposium “Conceptualising and Measuring Poverty: methods for the 21st century” at University College Cork – it took place on the 17th of May 2013.

At a later stage an elaborated annd extended version of these catchwords will be published in the framework of the book under the title

Poverty of the Welfare State.

*****************

*****************

Surely it is necessary, painting a bleak picture, showing the harsh measures and consequences of austerity policies under the aegis of neo-liberalism.

Sure, I would love to deconstruct now for the next two hours the ideology of neo-liberalism – I think there is much more and something different in it than we usually think about. Anyway, as I am supposed to talk about the EU, I may end right now with reference to just one letter from an official from the European Commission outlining in a very firm and concise form the EU’s privatisation strategy.

*****************

being originally from Germany I may start here pointing out what this potentially means in such a rich and democratic country – of which the constitution has still some obligation to

democratic, social and federal principles (Article 23)[1]

In my view it is hardly possible to justify under such heading a strategy of evicting homeless people.

*****************

It is equally clear that we have to highlight the immorality of such policies.

Having lived for some time in Ireland, I want to refer to Michael Higgins, addressing the European Parliament – see on this also already an earlier post)

There he stated

– Schuman, who was aware of it, reached back to recall the early monastic perigrinatio and declared Columbanus to be “the patron saint of all those who now seek to build a united Europe”.

– The Schuman meeting, and the others which followed it, assisted by such as Jean Monnet, was responding to near and terrible events. But we should never forget, and I emphasize it today, that in their response they recognized its immense value, and drew on, the rich scholarship, philosophy, moral instincts and generous impulses of European thought as they sought, not only to replace war with peace, but more importantly, to construct a vision of Europe’s people working together in an inclusive way. It was not any abstract construction. It was a practical proposal drawn from the head, propelled by the heart, and uniting economy and ethics in its aspiration.

(Higgins, Michael D., 2013: ‘Towards a European Union of the Citizens’. Adress to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, Wednesday, 17th April, 2013http://www.president.ie/speeches/address-by-president-michael-d-higgins-towards-a-european-union-of-the-citizens-european-parliament-strasbourg-wednesday-17th-april-2013-2/ – 10/05/2013)

*****************

Furthermore we should not hesitate to critically discuss the various “approaches” of dismantling the “welfare state”

Coming currently from Hungary Victor Orbán has to be mentioned, of course. He shocked some people by the orientation on a munka alapú társadalmat , i.e. work-based society – mind, there are some issues around translation – the official translation speaks of workfare society though the actual translation is likely “work based”. –

More captivating is in Hungary the shift of social policy issues to the minister of inner affairs – defining relevant issues a matter of control.

And more shocking is the fact that going through Budapest and seeing the amount of people sleeping rough. And it may actually be the contrast I faced actually last Sunday: passing one of the beautiful old buildings, still carrying the marks of the recent renovation and the archway offering shelter, no: a living space for a group of homeless people.

*****************

Criticising such positions: the harsh measures, the rejection on moral and ethical grounds and the conceptual dismantling means not least to defend the welfare state and actually to engage for its formation.

Living now in Italy we still face the challenge of replacing the traditional social protectionism as it had been established by Mafia with a modern welfare state.

But of course, it is then a question if our constitution gets the priorities right.

L’Italia è una Repubblica democratica, fondata sul lavoro.

Actually some may remember the times when the inclusion of the employment chapter into the EU-treaties had been celebrated as major success of social policy on the European level.

*****************

And of course I could go on with this EUropean game. And finally I would return to Brussels.

Well, two weeks ago I had been there again. After about four years I re-entered that stage. A bit strange, having been there for several years, being allowed to walk in and out …; this time it had  been more like entering an alien world of a fortress – with external and not least internal borders – discussing clear lines of programs, policy packages … – and knowing: the transparency suggested by the massive glass fronts showing as much reality as the screen saver of our computers.

*****************

Sure, there are reasons to celebrate – the EU as Nobel laureate.

But it had been on the personal level – carrying specific experiences from my Brussels years with me – again frightening to see how the less celebratory parts are forgotten – the memorial by ATD-Fourth World in front of the European Parliament is worn out.

*****************

OK, enough of this little EUropean game

We face some kind of paradox:

Poverty is seemingly a “general condition of socio-human existence – or even a condito humana, rooted in eternal greed and the immortality of immorality? Occasionally reaching unbearable scope, and reminding us of the need of a good life?

Or poverty is a very specific pattern of a very specific formation of society?

*****************

Part of this problem is the difficulty we face when it comes to defining poverty

I.

We see terms that are questionably used to be near to synonyms:

  • deprivation
  • social exclusion
  • disadvantage
  • exclusion

II.

We find complex approaches towards a definitional framework:

  • relative income or equality as matter of well-being
  • subjective and objective criteria
  • capability approach
  • human development and human security

And we find with this the different analytical perspectives behind it, e.g.

  • Human Development Index (HDI)
  • Human Wellbeing Index (HWI)
  • Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP)
  • Social Quality (SQ)

*****************

Two issues are – in today’s debates – somewhat permanent companions.

I.

While we are talking about poverty, we are actually concerned with wealth

  • for Adam Smith it had been the Wealth of the Nation
  • implicitly linked to the wealth of individuals, inherently understood as matter of increased availability of goods – SI, QoL
  • and frequently questioned by the wealth of society –in the pre-capitalist society for instance by an important economist like John Stuart Mill with his notion of the stationary state

I cannot, therefore, regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old school. I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition. I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress. It may be a necessary stage in the progress of civilization, and those European nations which have hitherto been so fortunate as to be preserved from it, may have it yet to undergo. It is an incident of growth, not a mark of decline, for it is not necessarily destructive of the higher aspirations and the heroic virtues; as America, in her great civil war, has proved to the world, both by her conduct as a people and by numerous splendid individual examples, and as England, it is to be hoped, would also prove, on an equally trying and exciting occasion. But it is not a kind of social perfection which philanthropists to come will feel any very eager desire to assist in realizing. Most fitting, indeed, is it, that while riches are power, and to grow as rich as possible the universal object of ambition, the path to its attainment should be open to all, without favour or partiality. But the best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

(Mill, John Stuart, 1848: Principles of Political Economy with some of their Apllications to Social Philosophy; London et altera: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920 [based on the 6th edition from 1865]: 748 f.)

Sure, talking about wealth is somewhat breath-taking then 150 billion USD that computer giant apple stores – hording is the proper term, as we know it from Marx.

*****************

II.

It had been also a somewhat unquestioned reference established to capitalism.

Occasionally it meant to criticise capitalism as fundamentally problematic.

More often it had been about a fundamentally affirmative approach, possibly slightly brushed up by looking at the varieties of capitalism (Hall, Peter A./Soskice, David (eds.): Varieties of Capitalism. The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), the claim of a “good capitalism” (Baumoll, William J./Litan, Robert E./Schramm, Carl J. Schramm (2007): Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity; Yale University Press).

*****************

Sure, as we accepted taking responsibility over from god, we have to look now at The Spirit Level (Wilkinson, Richard G./Pickett, Kate, 2009: The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London, Allen Lane) – mind the multiple meaning, linking to bubbles, levelling and spirituality itself. And with this we find of course easily also a link to the mushrooming moral economy.

*****************

What do these two links

  • wealth
  • capitalism

actually mean? We have to explore this against the background of a by and large undefined understanding of welfare.

We may translate it into the concern for the nation state as new framework for (re-)production of social and individual existence, defined by the means of production.

*****************

It has to be left to a side remark: this shift to the nation state as framework had been not least a fundamental shift of what (re-)production is about. Coming back to John Stuart Mill we see at the beginning of the chapter from which the quote is taken the actually interesting concern.

The preceding chapters comprise the general theory of the economical progress of society, in the sense in which those terms are commonly understood; the progress of capital, of population, and of the productive arts. But in contemplating any progressive movement, not in its nature unlimited, the mind is not satisfied with merely tracing the laws of the movement; it cannot but ask the further question, to what goal? Towards what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress? When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind?

It must always have been seen, more or less distinctly, by political economists, that the increase of wealth is not boundless that at the end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state, that all progress in wealth is but a postponement of this, and that each step in advance is an approach to it. We have now been led to recognise that this ultimate goal is at all times near enough to be fully in view ; that we are always on the verge of it, and that if we have not reached it long ago, it is because the goal itself flies before us. The richest and most prosperous countries would very soon attain the stationary state, if no further improvements were made in the productive arts, and if there were a suspension of the overflow of capital from those countries into the uncultivated or ill-cultivated regions of the earth.

(Mill, John Stuart, 1848: Principles of Political Economy with some of their Apllications to Social Philosophy; London et altera: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920 [based on the 6th edition from 1865]: 746)

Of course, this opens an interesting debate not least on utilitarianism – a theory of ethics which surely needs to be seen beyond its translation into utilitarian-based conceptualisations of exchange.

*****************

The main points are then the following.

(1) The development of the “welfare state” had been a differentiated process – giving answers to distinct socio-economic patterns. – This actually explains very much the different analytical approaches and criticisms around problem solving, control, socialisation, productive function of the welfare system (see Pierson, Christopher/Francis G. Castles (eds.): 2006: The Welfare State Reader; Cambridge: Polity Press)

(2) We are focusing now a comparable situation as it characterised the emergence of the different welfare states: the “EU” establishing itself as new national welfare system, but not (sufficiently) recognising the changed objective conditions.

(3) In order to understand these processes we have to investigate the foundation which is given by the link between means of production – mode of production – social system – social policy.

(4) Following classical economic thinking, EU social policies (and also the national social policies) are tied up by the limited understanding of the economic process as production function. The clearest formulation of this is the Cobb-Douglas production function:

Y = ALßKα

Production equals factor productivity multiplied by Labour input defined by output elasticity multiplied by capital defined by output elasticity

At least some of the problems with this have to be mentioned: it does not clearly spell out what the different factors are, and actually attributes productivity to capital, i.e. it supposes that capital would produce anything. It does not! Furthermore, it suggests implicitly that productivity is solely about commodity production – a factor that is not only in the light of more recent debates questionable. Most importantly, it refers to labour where we actually have to talk about labour power.

The latter point is of special importance as it allows us to focus our attention on the cost of the production and reproduction of labour power.

*****************

A brief overview of the analytical – and actually methodological – perspective has to do suffice. The elements will be presented in four matrixes which will lead to a further matrix which presents an analytical tool for welfare systems – they had been introduced already earlier.

focus of the productive process

consumerism[2]

rationalisation/ technicisation

Demand-supply-side economics

matrix 1: Value Generation

*****************

high-value production founded in informational labour

high-volume production based in low-cost labour

redundant producers, reduced on devalued labour

production of raw material founded in natural resources

matrix 2: Resource Reference

*****************

autocentric development

extraverted development

relative economic sustainability

competitiveness

matrix 3: Patterns of Growth

*****************

monetary policy i.w.s. as means of social integration

monetary policy i.w.s. as means of securing international sovereignty

competitiveness

traditionality

matrix 4: Socio-Political System and Sovereignty

*****************

This taken together provides an analytical tool for looking at development and the welfare system

resource reference

value generation

patterns of growth

socio-political system and sovereignty

matrix 5: welfare system – analytical tool

*****************

To some extent this surely reflects the traditional mainstream perspective with the common reference to T.H. Marshall:

I shall be running true to type as a sociologist if I begin by saying that I propose to divide citizenship into three parts. But the analysis is, in this case, dictated by history even more clearly than by logic. I shall call these three parts, or elements, civil, political and social.

(Marshall, Tom H., 1950: Citizenship and Social Class; in: Citizenship and Social Class; Tom H. Marshall/Tom Bottomore; London et altera: Pluto Press, 1992: 8)

*****************

The difficulty of understanding consists of the necessary differentiation between

  • secular trends
  • secular capitalist trends
  • specific developments as they are reflecting the connection between them

*****************

In any case: Capitalism surely had been up to hitherto the main driver of the development of the means of production, thus allowing also a major development of the productive forces (as matter of the production in Department I) and production of consumables (as matter of the production in Department II), thus being also a matter of the Wealth of Nations.

*****************

The fundamental challenge however is the following: This system defines its various borders in a way that contradicts its own conditions

  • e.g. the costs of labour power vs the need to ensure mass purchasing power
  • time
  • space
  • environment and externalities.

*****************

Then Social Policy and Welfare States have to be understood in a much broader way, including in particular

  • governance
  • productivity in economic terms
  • productivity in terms of social integration and cohesion
  • global inclusiveness.

*****************

It is surely a complex field we are looking and the actually important point is to accept this complexity. We may briefly come back to the Cobb-Doulas function mentioned above. There the approach had been criticised by the following:

“it suggests implicitly that productivity is solely about commodity production – a factor that is not only in the light of more recent debates questionable. Most importantly, it refers to labour where we actually have to talk about labour power.

The latter point is of special importance as it allows us to focus our attention on the cost of the production and reproduction of labour power.”

And we see marked shift in terms of the latter when we look at the current development not of income but on the source and securitisation. A few examples may do suffice – each of them standing for a specific fundamental problem.

  • Karstadt, a major trade chain at least of German origin and today surely in various ways internationally and globally braided, plans to withdraw for two-years from collective agreements which can be discussed in the perspective of income and rights
  • The eviction of people from their homes in Spain which is answered by a law against the banks, limiting their space for action inclusion and rights
  • The mushrooming of  soup kitchens – surely doing good for people concerned but undermining any rest of cohesion and rights
  • And globally an absurd call for more slums, clearly showing the need to reflect on empowerment and rights

*****************

Seen in such perspective, we should actually not be afraid if social policy is seen as productive factor. The question is – as always:

  • what do we actually produce?
  • how do we produce?

This is also important as this perspective allows us to go beyond a perspective that sees social policy as instrument of poor relief and charitable add-on to normal capitalism.

But it faces us with a major challenge, namely linking rights and law – some of you may know from my writing the inherent problem, due to the inherent individualist and individualising character of law.

*****************

In any case we may add another useful tool for the analysis, namely the assessment of control – centrally understood as multiple cumulation of power and property.

*****************

Of special relevance are here

  • control of means of production
  • control of processes of production
  • control of products
  • control of the distribution of products

*****************

The Social/Welfare Welfare Systems (see in this context also already the blog entry on China and Asia – A New Capitalist Centre or A New Capitalism?)

  • the social state – von Itzenplitz
  • the welfare society – Wigforss-Hansson
  • the welfare state – Beveridge
  • the familiarist-public welfare state – Leo XIII
  • the co-operative social economy – Raiffeisen
  • the harmonious familiarist paternalism – Confucius, Mencius

(see in this context in particular Herrmann, Peter, 2012: Social State, Welfare State and Then? Where to Move from the Welfare state? A Cooperative State of Sustainable Sociability as Perspective for Innovation; in: Heiskanen, Johanna/Henry, Hagen/Hytinkoski, Pekka/Köppä, Tapani (eds.): New Opportunities for Co-operatives: New Opportunities for People. Proceedings of the 2011 ICA Research Conference, 24-27 August, 2011, Mikkeli, Finland; Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Ruralia Institute, 2012: 295- 313).

*****************

EUrope – here we see roughly the development of the following major stages

  • from basic social security for workers (gender, ESF, social charter)
  • over marginal poverty relief and experimental good-doing
  • to employment policies
  • arriving at social innovation and social investment of the Lisbon competitiveness strategy.

*****************

The overall pattern

  • from civil liberties – single market
  • to political rights – crisis of legitimacy and EP-elections
  • to social rights – as matter of employment policies

*****************

But also – and not least:

All this is systematically caught in the contradiction of

  • productivist nation state building and
  • consumerist dependencies

*****************

Seen in this light, the EU is now facing a new competition between systems.

The wealth of nations is not an option for the EU,

  • being caught in internal and international/global competition
  • not having sufficient power and resources for inner and external colonialisation

*****************

In consequence we are confronted with a disastrous mine field

  • several countries “externally bankrupt” as for instance Cyprus and Greece
  • several countries “internally bankrupt” as for instance Germany
  • having a “model” and values for social policy that actually evolved from conditions that do not exist anymore
  • and not having the strength to establish – on its own – a valid socio-economic alternative

*****************

The two main problems and challenges I see:

  • the lack of suitable social fabrique
  • the need to reintegrate political economy

I am afraid that technical approaches like those proposed by Gabriele Giudice, Head of Unit, ECFIN.G3: Greece at European Commission and proposals for Social Investment will only provide a mere perspective – this is a nice way to speak of privatised services that are not accessible, and rocketing unemployment rates.

*****************

Moving on seems a bit like a Don Quijoterie ….

But at least it would be wrong to say that we have to worry about money – at least here in Ireland there is still so much money around that it can be literally be put into the waste bin. – on ebay a Quinnsworth-plastic bag  had been offered  earlier this year for 997 Euro.

[1]           Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany; version October 2010; https://www.btg-bestellservice.de/pdf/80201000.pdf – 10/05/2013

Interestingly he previous version had been different

Article 20 (Basic principles of state order, right to resist).

(1) The Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic and social Federal state.

Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Promulgated by the Parliamentary Council on 23 May 1949) (as Amended by the Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990 and Federal Statute of 23 September 1990); http://www.constitution.org/cons/germany.txt – 10/05/2013

[2]            Degree to which the economic process is focussed on extended reproduction

Dimensions of Development and ‘Welfare’ – An Analytical Tool

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, social quality, works, projects, publications

The following emeges from and brings together different views on developmet, focussing on the political economy of processing structures, however taking also sociological, psychological and “governance” aspoects into account. Importantly, it is not least bound to a specific understanding of the relationality in which social processes and the “environment”.

An elaborated proposition will be published under the title “European Policies of Social Inclusion – Fatality of Good-Will”. A major reference for the elaboration had been the teaching of the MA in International Economy and Business at the Faculty of Economics at Corvinus University, Faculty of Economics, Department of World Economy. Thanks go to the students and some inspiring debates during the course work.

focus of the productive process

consumerism[1]

rationalisation/ technicisation

Demand-supply-side economics

matrix 1: Value Generation

high-value production founded in informational labour

high-volume production based in low-cost labour

redundant producers, reduced on devalued labour

production of raw material founded in natural resources

matrix 2: Resource Reference

autocentric development

extraverted development

relative economic sustainability

competitiveness

matrix 3: Patterns of Growth

monetary policy i.w.s. as means of social integration

monetary policy i.w.s. as means of securing international sovereignty

competitiveness

traditionality

matrix 4: Socio-Political System and Sovereignty

This taken together provides an analytical tool for looking at development and the welfare system

resource reference

value generation

patterns of growth

socio-political system and sovereignty

matrix 5: welfare system – analytical tool

An extension can be achieved by considering that this methodological framework is not necessarily limited to capitalist societies. Instead, it is possible to apply the same approach also to non-(“pre and Post”) capitalist societies, focusing on power-relationships (with the two dimensions of property and control).

capitalist mode of production

non-capitalist mode of production
control of means of production
control of processes of production
control of products
control of the distribution of products

matrix 6: Dimensions of Property

[1]            Degree to which the economic process is focussed on extended reproduction

Europe – Quo Vadis?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, works, projects, publications

Nearly there:

The European Social Model – Chimera or Core of the EU?

Nearly finished the contribution I had been asked to write for a book – it emerges from the work of the scientific council of Attac. And I guess I know now very well what to say when giving the presentation in Cork next month – a follow up from last year’s Poverty Summer School at UCC.

The really relevant part for me, i.e. my own thinking is that the article will help to clearly spell out the myth of the “old welfare state”, thus allowing to clarify the foundation for a fundamental “revolutionary” form that is established on the objective development rather than the hope for a voluntarist to approach towards a renaissance of overcome model. Still, though we truly will need a revolutionary approach we face even within the capitalist framework a rather radical overhaul of thinking when it comes to social policy.

The “welfare state” is as such a not only a multifaceted mechanism, but also historically differentiated, specifically responding to the different phases of the capitalist process of generating value – I approached this issue on the earlier occasion of a presentation in Mikkeli, Finland.

The challenge of any social policy discussion is surely to protect the baby while handling the bathing water. And so it is especially the left that is challenged to “protect” the achievements of what is called welfare state while the more or less general austerity policies are the driving force of the political mainstream. To be clear (i) there had been huge improvements of the living conditions in the widest sense if we look at the secular development; (ii) it has to be equally clear that at this stage we have to search for clear means to simply protect against “system(at)ic rollbacks”.

Nevertheless, we have to be analytically clear about both, the severity of changes and also the actual reason and causes of these changes. As well known from Marx’ studies, the individual capitalist represents the class interest rather than reflecting individual morality. In this light much of the critique – also from positions that claim to fundamentally reject the current structures – are an expression of good will, but also an expression of mal-information. On of the recent examples of such short-sighted approaches had been the official address given by the president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, to the European Parliament. Sure we may easily agree at first glance with his statement:

They (i.e. “our citizens in Europe”) feel that in general terms the economic narrative of recent years has been driven by dry technical concerns; for example, by calculations that are abstract and not drawn from real problems, geared primarily by a consideration of the impact of such measures on speculative markets, rather than driven by sufficient compassion and empathy with the predicament of European citizens who are members of a union, and for whom all of the resources of Europe’s capacity, political, social, economic and intellectual might have been drawn on, driven by the binding moral spirit of a union.

But as nice as all this sounds, it fundamentally underestimates the “compassion and empathy” of those “technicians” who actually use the guise of technicity to establish a strict rule of something that may even be called a “capitalist tributary world system”.

Austerity is not a moral, ethical retardation of individuals or “groups of individuals” that has to be and can be countered by moral appeals. Strictly speaking, austerity policy is then not an exception but a consequent expression of one of the two souls that characterise capitalism gaining dominance: To the extent and as long as capitalism – made possible by the technical development of the productive forces and expressed by a specific mode of production – could perform reasonably well in terms of production of wealth and could make profit based on the realisation-side of the overall economic process (distribution and exchange, in short linked to an understanding of wages as purchase power), social policy could be grasped by concepts as “productive social policy”, allowing to ask for the Costs of Non-Social Policy, as Didier Fouarge did 2003 in his Report for the European Commission’s Employment and Social Affairs DG.

However, this had been linked to a very specific constellation. Historically such constellations had been given nationally, leading to different development of national welfare regimes – this had been outlined earlier with reference to the Mikkeli-presentation. Although it had been left out of consideration on the occasion of that presentation, each of these distinct national systems had not least been part of a process of international re-ordering.

The thesis is that we find some similar pattern of European social policy development: in short: from a non-social policy with some marginalised measures towards a productivist social policy considering the costs of not having social policy and finally arriving at a new stage: not least (though not only)

  1. under the pressure of changing international constellations (EUrope in the world) and
  2. the changing also technical development of the productive forces, reserves for generating profit from a favourable pattern of distribution had been eroded.

This means (a) now profit has to be generated from production rather than in the sphere of realisation; (b) competition is now increasingly a matter of crowding out, not of performance, as it had been earlier the case (s. e.g. Zinn, Karl Georg, 2006: Mit Keynes zu einer „anderen Wirtschaft“. Zur Langfristperspektive keynesianischer Ökonomie; Beitrag zum Workshop “Keynesianische Ökonomie als alternative Ökonomie?” der Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung (Berlin, 24.-26.2.2006: 18); (c) political power – not least with its arbitariness – regains meaning and reminds fereqently of feudal structures (see e.g. Herrmann, Peter, 2012; in: NewPrincedoms …) and (d) though global centre-periphery structures remain meanigful, we find at the same time and increasingly processes of peripherialisation within the centres.

And it exactly this constellation that leads to austerity policies: we should be well aware of the obvious meaning of privatisation here: it is about “de-socialisation” which is a matter of shifting responsibility back to the “complete individual”, or as we titled it is about Pure Individualism (s. Claire Dorrity: Critique of Pure Individualism; in: Dorrity, Claire/Herrmann, Peter [eds.]: Social Professional Activity – The Search for a Minimum Common Denominator in Difference; New York: Nova Science, 2009). It’s critique needs to take the economic dimension into account that obliges us to recognise that the European Social Model actually only existed as an expression of voluntarism which had been celebrated and maintained as long as it had been profitable. As soon as profit can only be gained from production in the strict sense, or in other words: as soon as the profitability of realisation comes to an end, we find a shift in social policy terms, the trinity of

  • austerity,
  • harsh exploitation and
  • orientation on “social investment”.

But what can the latter mean under these conditions of pure individualism? It means that we come now definitely to the point of an ultimate Critique of Practical Reason: the individual “invests him/herself” – and ironically this is celebrated by the bourgeois press as success of creativity. And although all this is surely not the complete story, it is a major chapter in the book that opens in front of us: self-exploitation, precarity, neglect of long-term personal health in the hope of short-term survival.

Europe – Quo Vadis?

We all know the story, Peter asking Jesus Quo vadis? – The supposed answer had been Romam vado iterum crucifigi.

Europe is on the best way to crucify itself – but not by taking the route Beyond GDP serious. Instead, I crucifies itself by being too serious about the self-set strategic goal, spelled out in Lisbon:

to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.

And Europe crucifies those who dare to oppose or at least do not submit themselves: academics, political activists and those who fall through the loops of the increasingly fragile net.

Much more could be said – and it will be said in the book contribution, on occasion of the Cork event and in a forthcoming article in Social Inclusion

Strategies

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, social quality

Earlier I typed strategy – and a tiny typo in collaboration with the auto-correction made it to “static”. Recent blogs topic, right?
Anyway, the following is actually about dynamics – a very dynamic presentation at the School of Applied Social Studies of University College of Cork. A “Director of Planning & Institutional Research” giving an

Overview of UCC’s Strategic Plan

Now, aren’t we in politics always asked to begin by highlighting the positive aspects? That is what I learned while working in lobbying in Brussels. So, be it then: the outline of the so-called strategic plan (I try since a couple of days to access the website – but it seems to be a strategy that this site remains until the time of writing inaccessible, although I lodged the technical flaw at the mail address of the webmaster) is very simple and open – mind, I’m not writing using “a simplified approach to a complex issue”. And being aware of the fact that I cannot delve into all the valuable aspects and details issued in both, the plan and presentation, I want to continue with another positive moment.

I.

The presentation had been highlighting the importance of strengthening

research, innovation and job creation.

There are frequent debates on the sequence of such features and here we can praise that the strategy is first about research – as it should obviously be the objective for an academic institution. Job creation, without doubt important, is not the ultimate and primary goal … .

But a little hesitation emerges if we think about another aspect of the presentation, the emphasis of financial sustainability. Not that I suggest neglecting the importance of this matter. Still, there are two points that are worthwhile to look at:

  1. Social science is currently discussing the question of sustainability in a more serious and generic way, highlighting that any debate on sustainability has to go beyond “single issue orientations”. There is no environmental and financial and economic and social … sustainability – there is only one complex, genuinely integrated and genuinely relational sustainability or there is no sustainability at all. Having said that there is a wide debate on this does not mean that there is an overall consensus on what this means – I elaborated on some of the issues In a recent article published in the International Journal of Social Quality under the title “Economic Performance, Social Progress and Social Quality”. At this stage it isd important to emphasise that there is some readiness to ask questions and work on elaborating answers.
  2. The  point that is crucially implied is less about theorising this issue. Two points are hugely important when it comes to the “pragmatics” of policy making though.
  • A sustainability strategy of a university has to be oriented on the requirements set by academia – and although this is surely nothing that should be trimmed and protected in an ivory tower, it is equally sure that this is not about any kind of fulfilling needs of a capitalist growth economy.
  • This brings us actually to the second point: of course, any university strategy has to be part of a national plan – actually another point that has to be positively highlighted in the presentation. It clearly an unquestionably emphasises this need. But … – but this makes only sense if the national plan is worthwhile and can be seen as being positively concerned with sustainability – btw, we speak in our work of the social quality network increasingly about social sustainability, an issue which will obviously employ quite a lot of our strategic thinking in the Observatory on Social Quality, now being established at EURISPES in Rome.

II.

In any case, the national plan – be it concerned with general questions of development or with the area of third level education and research is rather questionable. Only few points will suffice to issue the problematique – and they are all immediately also linked to the presentation.

We find the topic of internationalisation – in this section we hear about recruiting international students but we hear little to nothing about how we aim and put into practice the recruitment of students from financially weak backgrounds: people with working class background from “rich countries” and people from countries of so-called developing countries or “the global south” as it is called today [and actually should (if we take the equator as reference) include parts of the east and west, equally poor]. It is worth a side remark: I remember a student from the “global west”: coming from be USNA, arriving with a generous Lions or Rotary grant – and being a total failure. The only reason that he actually did not fail literally …: he had been “too rich to fail” – if anybody thinks about large banks now …, well this is your thought then. My thought at the time had been: it is strange that this student had been “taken out of my custody”, actually he had been “transferred” to another course, passed successfully and this is surely very different to another student who never made it into my course as he could not afford paying the approximately 16,000 euro fee at the time (the European rate had been approximately 3,000 euro in those years). Sure, this student from an African country nearly got the place: the charity which had been ready to pay his fees announced the decision too late. The “right of the rich” and the “charity for the poor” as national strategy then? A meaningful shift in thinking is required, pursuing the right of everybody to avail of valuable, emancipative education, different to skills training for the upper and middle classes only (and a true knowledge space for a small elite). Every first-year student I am bringing her to legal studies learns that law is not about straight application of legislation but it is still about the Kantian challenge, given with the definition he provided, namely saying that

[r]ight is therefore the sum of the conditions under which the choice of one can be united with the choice of another in accordance with universal law.

(Kant, Immanuel, 1797: The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated and edited by Mary Gregor. With an Introduction by Roger J. Sullivan; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996: 24 [In the German original slightly different in its emphasis ‘Recht ist der Inbegriff der Bedingungen, unter denen die Willkür des einen mit der Willkür des anderen nach einem allgemeinen Gesetz der Freiheit vereinigt werden kann’ (Kant, Immanuel, 1797: Die Metaphysik der Sitten in zwey Theilen; in: Kant, Immanuel. Werke in zwoelf Baenden. Hrsg. v. Wilhelm Weischedel; Bd. VIII; Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1982: 337)]

III.

And we findin the presentation of the strategic plan under the heading of internationalisation the orientation on FDI, yes indeed: foreign direct investment. Every first-year student I teach economics learns that – in particular but not only today under conditions of globalisation – two things are not feasible, not sustainable: a strategy that is based on FDI and/or export as sole and main pillar; and a strategy that understands indigenous development inter light of a parochial mindset.

It is actually frightening that the presenter, holding an MBA from Henley Management College, celebrated on one of the university’s websites as somebody who

has over 20 years experience in consultancy, operations, engineering, supply chain management and higher education roles

apparently missed this point too: it had been the orientation on such a wrong strategy that brought (not only) the Irish economy into severe trouble. It is a strategy of statics, degrading a country and its people to supernumeraries on the global scale, actually making a large number of the population to global players by forcing them to emigrate. – sure, individual examples of successful FDI can be found. But to tell us that we should jump out of the window, because some individuals actually survived can only come from a presenter who gets paid for showing off with the lack competence.

– You don’t believe that you can make money from incompetence, even stupidity? I heard the other day for a guy who cut off a branch from a tree. He got 20 grand for it. The reason: he had been sitting on the branch, on that part he cut off. The case went to court and the judge granted compensation mentioned before.

So what is then the contribution of Irish universities to internationalisation. I saw recently a poster from UCC, a good example for expressing visually how such a contribution is u understood: missionaries under the academic and secular instead of the christian gown. – Sure, the hope remains: Christian missions brought us liberation theology, secular mission may then truly liberate liberal economics by establishing a new mode of production, based i collective and social liberties.

IV.


And indeed there seems to be a very limit understanding when it comes to “contributing to the community”. First it’s about commercialisation, the creation of jobs and all this … and then it is about actually “contributing to the community”. The balance act between the bourgeois: the free marketer, and the liberal citoyen. It is frightening to learn another time that people are allowed to ruin societies by simply not understanding and admitting that even after Alfred Marshall economy is still political economy. Any attempt to maintain the Marshallian separation of the economy for the political sphere is meant to fail like any strategy of sustainability is doomed to fail as long as it is understood as technical challenge. Sure, we “need jobs in the communities” and we need highly qualified people in the communities. But we won’t get them there by introducing new PhD courses; and we won’t get there even by simply opening the doors of academic institutions. All this is about understanding with an open mind academia as social force, responsible for emancipation of the majority of the people in their own personal and social growth – the economy and the development of the mode of production have to follow this power-requirement and nothing else. And it is definitely not a matter of the interest of the “corporate universitarian interest”.

V.

The vision:

To be a world-class university connecting our region to the globe.

As said earlier: moving on the stage of politics is supposedly about being fair, highlighting also the positive aspects of the position that one critically investigates. The positive point here is that such statement is so shallow, so empty that it cannot even fail. The strategic goal of Lisbon 2000 claimed to

make Europe, by 2010, the most competitive and the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.

The Lisbon strategy, with this vision, failed – and for many the failure had been visible from the outset. UCC’s strategic plan is not really facing such danger: too many empty words, to much glossy paper to be really relevant – it can only leave us with shaking heads, though some will fall in the meantime and others will fall in the future. And some will remain – those of people who are able to maintain meaningful reputation over time, paradoxically engaged in the fundamental questions of their own era and exactly due to this engagement remaining highly relevant beyond their particular day. Many may remember him: Max Horkheimer; and surely few will oppose what he claimed and what he lived for, a university

that is characterised by the passionate orientation on the complex whole, less occupied than elsewhere by illusions, but especially by the fact that its members – professors and lecturers, students – are in spite of all the differences of their views engaged together in the common belief that against all the odds there is a future, that human beings are able to control the destructive external and internal/personal forces and establish a humane universe.

(Horkheimer, Max, 1952: Akademisches Studium. Immatrikulationen-Rede. Sommersemester 1952; in: Max Horkheimer, 1953: Akademisches Studium. Begriff der Bildung. Fragen des Hochschulunterrichts; Frankfurt/M.: Vittorio Klostermann: 5)

And instead of following the fashionable trend to professionalisation and “presentability” we should acknowledge the deep truth of his reflection:

disappointment and perplexity [are not simply emerging] because students are too weak to learn the technical aspects the instruments of the subject; it emerges because they do not see the bridge between the ‘professional’ and those matters that deserve thge name of truth and that had been the motivation that brought them to the university.

(ibid.: 7)

Indeed, not all bad; especially as I received the other day an e-mail … – yes, from Cork – signed by http://www.attackthetax.com/ and the Common Law Society, talking about FEAR.

it stands for “FALSE EDUCATION APPLIED REPEATEDLY”

Which means, that if you fill a Man or Woman full of rubbish for long enough, constantly REPEATING the same mundane shallow drivvvvvel,,, eventually although in their hearts they know that it is wrong … they will enivatebly start to beleve what they are being told, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The Greatest threat to the State is not groups, crowds, organisations, political parties, movements or collectives … it is the Man or Woman that can think Critically.

That is the Man or Woman that cannot be enslaved … and they will teach others.

May be this is something to think about when it comes to strategic development of strategy development. But then, can we expect this from people who are victims of previous FEAR, now fearing more to loose their well paid jobs rather than loosing the little bit of sense they may have left?

Yes indeed, a lot done – much to be revised …